


What the Water Said

by themorninglark



Category: Free!
Genre: Flashbacks, M/M, Magical Realism, People have reported crying, Tokyo - Freeform, and yelling at me a lot, not really angst but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-07 03:11:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 59,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3159041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Makoto’s gaze flicks upwards. “You know, Haru… you used to say the water is alive.”</p><p>Haru nods, silently.</p><p>“What if I told you that... that someone told me it really <i>is</i>? I'm sure it's just a practical joke, but - what if I said that? Would you think I was crazy?”</p><p>Haru stares back at him, impassive as always. “Why would I think that? I know it's alive.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i am the sea at iwatobi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Makoto receives an unusual letter.

_The water is alive._

_Once you dive in, it will immediately bare its fangs and attack._

_But there’s nothing to fear. Don’t resist the water._

_Thrust your fingers into the surface and carve an opening. Then slide your body through that opening. Moving your arms, your head, your chest…_

 

* * *

 

It is a spring day in Tokyo, just like any other.

The date is early April, and they've just started their second year of university. There’s the scent of sakura in the air, drifting amidst the usual city smells of traffic, coffee and teeming humanity. A cool breeze swirls gently round Makoto as he steps out of his door.

Spring is Makoto’s favourite time of year, full of promise and hope, a sweet, coy wink of an eye as the earth sheds its cloak of white and dons that soft, verdant green instead.

It is on a day like this when Makoto locks his door and walks down the corridor, whistling tunelessly under his breath, that he bumps into his mailman Uchida-san.

Uchida-san is a kindly gentleman with brown hair, greying at the temples, who’s been delivering mail round these parts for more than ten years now. He always has a smile and a wave for Makoto. Sometimes he brings an extra onigiri for him. Apparently, Makoto simply radiates _helpless student who can’t cook_ ; or, perhaps, he simply reminds Uchida-san of his own children. Uchida-san has a son and a daughter, both a few years older than Makoto, fresh graduates who’ve just started working.

Mayuko is a fitness instructor in a local gym. Makoto has met her a few times, vaguely related lines of work and all. She’s fiery, no-nonsense and strikes Makoto somewhat as a female version of Rin, which is simultaneously frightening and intriguing.

Kiyoshi is the younger of the pair and Makoto only knows him from the photos that Uchida-san shares with great enthusiasm. He has a warm smile and mischievous eyes, and he works in a bank.

When Makoto sees Uchida-san in the corridor, cap on his head and satchel slung round his shoulder, he’s surprised. Normally, Uchida-san simply drops off the mail in their building’s front lobby. Makoto has never seen him come upstairs.

“Good morning, Uchida-san!” Makoto calls cheerfully.

“Ah, Tachibana-kun!”

“What brings you up here today?”

“Actually,” says Uchida-san, smiling at him with a crinkle in the corners of his eyes, “it’s you.”

“Huh?” Makoto stares at the mailman. “Me?”

“I have a special dispatch for you,” says Uchida-san. He reaches into his bag, and pulls out a small blue envelope.

Makoto takes it. _Tachibana Makoto_ is written across the front in a graceful, calligraphic hand he doesn’t recognise, with his address in small characters underneath.

“This is unusual… I mean, for you to personally deliver something to me like this,” says Makoto, staring down at the envelope in his hands, then back up at Uchida-san.

The mailman doesn’t comment on the circumstances, merely inclines his head in a polite bow. “The sender requests a response, at your convenience.”

Makoto’s even more mystified now. He turns it over. There’s no return address.

“How do I respond?” asks Makoto, starting to fiddle with the flap of the envelope.

“I believe it is a simple yes or no. You may inform me,” says Uchida-san.

“Oh! You know who sent me this?”

There’s a friendly twinkle in Uchida-san’s eye. “In a manner of speaking.”

Makoto’s just about torn this thing open when he catches a glimpse of his watch, and gasps. “Ah - I’m sorry, Uchida-san, I have to run for the train! I’ll read this later.”

He stuffs the envelope into his jacket pocket and starts to sprint down the corridor. “Thanks for delivering it!” he says breathlessly, tossing a quick glance over his shoulder and a smile at Uchida-san. “Have a great day!”

Uchida-san waves him off with a genial farewell. “Same to you, Tachibana-kun!”

 

* * *

 

It’s not until later on the train, when he’s two stops into his journey and he’s finally caught enough of his breath to pull out the mysterious envelope again, that Makoto realises something.

The envelope has no postmark.

In fact, the envelope has no stamp.

Curiouser and curiouser, thinks Makoto.

_How did it end up in the post? How did it end up with my mailman?_

_Uchida-san says he knows the sender… so did someone deliver it to him personally for me?_

Makoto’s drawing a complete blank at every turn. If someone knows where he lives and wants to give him something in person, something that can't be posted, he can’t imagine why on earth they would then bother going through his mailman. Yet it seems from Uchida-san’s behaviour - the strange expectation of a response - that that’s exactly what happened.

It’s hard to peel open the last bit of the flap while maintaining his balance on the crowded Tokyo metro, so Makoto settles for ripping the envelope rather unceremoniously with his teeth and fishing out the folded paper inside. It has a funny, familiar smell about it, like… like the beach.

Makoto could almost swear he tastes saltwater on his lips as he takes the note in hand. It's written in the same flowing, calligraphic script that spells out his name on the front of the envelope.

 

_Dear Tachibana Makoto,_

_Greetings!_

_I am delighted to make your acquaintance. In some ways, it feels like I have known you for a very, very long time. However, we have never been directly introduced._

_I am water._

_I am the deep blue ocean and the calm pool. I am the river that runs through Tokyo. I am the sea at Iwatobi. I am the rain and the storm._

_For thousands of human lifetimes, I have watched your kind with fascination. I am curious. I wish to learn more. I have learnt that humans find it disturbing to be observed without their knowledge. Therefore, I write to you with all respect to request your permission, and to sometimes communicate with you if I have questions._

_I do not wish to alarm you. You may decline. No questions will be asked._

_The individual who delivered this to you is a spirit of the water. It speaks with my voice. You may let it know your response. I await your positive reply with great anticipation._

 

There’s no signature, only a small, darkened splotch on the paper that, against all odds, remains warm and damp to the touch in the air-conditioned carriage.

Makoto reads the letter another time. And another.

He tries to reach a hand up to slap himself awake out of this weird dream, but the rocking of the train disorients him, and he ends up throwing the hand in question up towards the handholds instead.

_Come on, Makoto. Wake up._

He closes his eyes and counts to ten, very slowly, in his head. He breathes in and out once for each count. On ten, he blinks his eyes open again.

He’s still on the train.

He looks down. The letter’s still in his hand.

The first coherent thought that Makoto can remember popping into his mind is _Uchida-san’s a water spirit? Really?_

The words _spirit of the water_ conjure up a lithe blue image in Makoto’s head, a fluid, slippery being, a flash of sapphire passing before his eyes, leaving only mist and an ethereal spray of droplets on his face.

His mailman wears a dark blue jacket. That’s as far as the similarities go.

His mailman is stoic and built like a stout older uncle, with boxy shoulders. He seems entirely solid, human, and not in the least transcendent. He's been delivering mail for  _ten years_.

Makoto's mind, riding this train of thought, shudders to a sudden and abrupt halt. There's just no place to go from here that makes any sense. It's like looking over a cliff.

 _This must be a practical joke of some sort_ , he thinks.

An announcement lets him know that he’s reached his stop. He stuffs the envelope back into his pocket, and tries to put it out of mind as he hotfoots it over to his university for the morning’s first lecture.

 

* * *

 

_All I want is to feel the water._

_With my skin, my eyes, my soul…_

_To never doubt what it makes me feel._

_Believe in myself. Don’t resist the water. Welcome it._

_We accept one another._

 

* * *

 

Makoto has a part-time job at a swimming club near Shibuya, where he assists the head coach with classes. He goes there twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, after university's done for the afternoon.

On Thursdays, he finishes up at the club at 6pm precisely, says a cheery goodbye to Coaches Akiyama and Hori, waves at Fujiwara-san the receptionist, takes a 12-minute walk to the station and gets on the train to meet Haru for dinner.

On Thursdays, Haru ends his training at 6.30pm and goes to meet Makoto at the no-frills little restaurant near his university, where he always orders a saba donburi and iced barley tea regardless of the season.

Makoto is nowhere near as decisive as Haru when it comes to food, and inevitably dithers around with the menu for a full ten minutes at least before ordering something that varies every time. Today, he finds himself pointing at something randomly when the waitress comes round, having just stared at the same page the entire time and registered exactly nothing from it, never mind that they've been to this restaurant every Thursday for the last three months.

The envelope in his pocket crumples audibly as he takes off his jacket. Somewhat over-optimistically, as it’s turned out, Makoto had been hoping it would simply dissolve and vanish by the end of the day and this whole bizarre affair would turn out to be nothing more than a very, very long hallucination.

But it is still very much there. It stares up at Makoto from the seat next to him where he’s chucked the jacket, a visible rectangular outline, framed in the folds of the light spring fabric.

The waitress brings Haru’s iced barley tea and Makoto’s hot green tea. Haru takes a sip, looking oddly at Makoto.

“What is it?” Haru says.

Makoto starts. “Eh…? What?”

“You don’t even like oyakodon.”

“I ordered oyakodon?” Makoto groans.

Haru’s lips quirk upwards in amusement. “I’d offer to swap, but I know you like saba even less than oyakodon.”

Makoto slumps onto the table. He’s eye level with Haru’s iced tea, and he can see the cloudy brown liquid floating inside, misting up the side of the glass.

He can’t help feeling like even the _tea_ is watching him, now.

 _I’m going insane,_ thinks Makoto.

Haru hasn’t said anything. His hands are clasped on the table, and he’s still looking patiently down at Makoto, waiting for him to speak.

Makoto’s gaze flicks upwards. “You know, Haru… you used to say the water is alive.”

Haru nods, silently.

“What if I told you that... that someone told me it really _is_? I'm sure it's just a practical joke, but - what if I said that? Would you think I was crazy?”

Haru stares back at him, impassive as always. “Why would I think that? I know it's alive.”

“No, I mean…”

Makoto pauses, struggling for the words. _I mean it wrote me a letter. I mean my mailman is a water spirit. I mean it wants to talk to me. I mean I don’t even know what to think anymore._

He sighs. There’s no way to say this without sounding like a lunatic, so he settles for blunt and direct, which is right up Haru’s alley anyway.

“I mean, it’s _alive_. It has thoughts. It has some… some kind of… sentience. It can talk to you. It - ”

“Makoto,” Haru cuts him off, abruptly, and Makoto thinks _oh boy, I’ve pushed it too far, Haru’s going to feel my forehead for a fever and send me to a hospital -_

But Haru simply tilts his head to one side in puzzlement and says, “Haven’t I always said that? _The water is alive._ ”

Makoto gapes at Haru, who’s sitting across him in this old familiar restaurant with this extraordinary pronouncement on his lips and an expression of blank incomprehension on his face.

The waitress brings their two bowls of rice over. Makoto’s too dazed to even thank her, which seems to startle Haru because Makoto _always_ says thank you, and Haru snaps himself out of the mutual staring for just long enough to say a hurried word of thanks to the waitress as she gives a small bow and leaves.

The smell of food wakes Makoto a little out of his stupor. He blinks, and opens his mouth to speak, hoping something vaguely coherent will come out of it.

“Y-y-you - I mean - I - I - you - when you say the water is alive, you - you _mean_ it? Like, _literally_?”

Something seems to click inside Haru’s head, and he visibly recoils, eyes widening, with his chopsticks paused halfway to his lips.

“You mean all those times, you thought I was just making some weird figure of speech?”

“Well, _yes_!” Makoto cries. “Isn’t that the normal thing to think?”

Haru just looks exasperated now. "Why would I say something as strange as that if I didn't mean it?"

He’s set down his chopsticks, and he is decidedly neglecting the soy sauce saba in his bowl in favour of paying Makoto his full attention, which is a sign that this conversation is going either terribly well or just _terribly_. Makoto isn’t sure which.

Makoto dodges the question with one of his own. “So, uh, the water… it, uh, it talks to you?”

“Now I understand.” Haru sighs. “You think I’m crazy. You've always thought I'm crazy. All of you.”

“No!” Makoto sits bolt upright, waving his hands in the air so frantically that he almost knocks their tea over. “Look, Haru, this whole conversation started because I brought it up, right? That the water is alive?”

“Yeah,” says Haru, furrowing his brow. “Why did you say that?”

“I think it’s easier if you read this…”

Makoto reaches into his jacket and fishes out the blue envelope. It still smells like the sea, even after a whole day in his pocket, running around campus and then sitting in the swimming club locker.

Haru takes out the letter inside and reads it. His expression is totally unchanging throughout. Makoto attempts to eat the oyakodon in the meantime, and blanches. He just can’t get into this sort of runny egg.

He takes a long sip of his green tea. Sudden-onset hydrophobia be damned, the stuff can’t be too dangerous or frightening if it's tamely letting him gulp it down, surely.

Haru finishes reading, and puts the note back into the envelope. There’s a smile on his face, of all things.

“Looks like it learned some manners,” he says.

“Manners? _Manners?_ Haru, an inanimate object just wrote me a letter and we're discussing etiquette?”

“I never got anything like this,” says Haru. “It just started talking to me when I was really young. I thought it was normal. Honestly, Makoto. I thought the water talked to everyone.”

Haru says this in all seriousness, voice slightly raised, blue-eyed gaze meeting Makoto’s directly.

_Blue eyes._

_Eyes like the ocean._

“Oh god, Haru,” says Makoto, with a sharp intake of breath. “Are you a water spirit too?”

Haru looks astonished. “A _water spirit_?”

“I mean, um… you’re a _lot_ more like a water spirit than Uchida-san.”

“Who is Uchida-san?”

“My mailman. He’s the one who gave this to me.”

“Oh. I see." Haru pauses. "And why do you think I’m a lot more like a water spirit than your mailman?”

“Because… because being in the water is so natural for you, Haru. It’s where you belong. You’re so beautiful when you’re in the water,” says Makoto, earnestly.

Haru casts his gaze downwards, the slightest tinge of pink on his cheeks. “Flatterer,” he mumbles.

Makoto smiles. “It’s true.”

“So. I take it that your mailman is not beautiful in the water.”

Makoto frowns. “I can’t imagine Uchida-san in the water…”

“Makoto. You’re just as much of a swimming romantic as Rin,” says Haru, looking up. He finally picks up his chopsticks and starts eating. The food’s gone a bit cold by now.

Makoto picks the chicken out of his bowl and eats it with the rice, avoiding the egg. “What do you mean?”

“You have a romantic idea of what a water spirit should look like. But actually, you’ve never met one before. So I don’t see why you’re so surprised about your mailman. Maybe all water spirits look like mailmen.”

The appalling idea of every mailman in Tokyo being a water spirit suddenly takes root in Makoto’s head and cannot be unthought.

“Have _you_ ever met a water spirit?” he asks Haru.

Haru shakes his head. “I told you. I never got anything like this letter. All that happens to me is that the water talks to me when I’m in it. Not even all that often. Just sometimes.”

“And uh… what does it say?”

Makoto still can’t quite believe he’s really having this outrageous conversation with Haru. A part of him still clings on, with a hopeful desperation, to the possibility that he might wake up and find himself back in the wee hours of Thursday morning all over again, safe in his bed, where he’ll certainly stay and call in sick to school so as to avoid going out in the corridor and bumping into Uchida-san.

Haru shrugs. “ _‘Move here. Move there. You’re cold today. You can go faster. Welcome to my world.’_ Things like that. Sometimes it makes a witty remark about my form if it’s bad. It can be quite rude.”

It doesn’t sound particularly exciting, thinks Makoto. The letter was a lot more articulate than that. He wonders if Uchida-san wrote it. “And do you talk back?”

“When I feel like it,” says Haru.

Makoto takes this to mean _not very often_.

“So…”

He nods at the blue envelope, sitting next to Haru’s arm. “What do you think I should do about that?”

“Whatever you want,” says Haru. “If it weirds you out, say no. I’ll tell it to leave you alone too.”

“But…”

Makoto’s words feel clumsy and jumbled in his throat. He stalls for time by taking another spoonful of rice, chewing it slowly, then washing it down with lukewarm tea.

He looks across the table at Haru, his best friend, his soulmate, the person he loves most in this world. Haru, who lives and breathes water. _Haru_. Haruka. Nanase Haruka, the famous freestyle swimmer. Beautiful dolphin-child Haru, whose every movement in the shimmering blue of the pool makes Makoto smile, and always has.

Not a child anymore, Makoto corrects himself. And neither is he. They’re both moving on with their lives.

“Hey, Haru…”

Haru looks up, over the edge of his bowl.

"If the water spoke to me too, then… I think I’d be able to understand how you feel a little better, won’t I?’

_About the water being alive. About what it means to accept it, to not resist it, to not fight. About carving out a space of your own in the deep blue. About feeling it with every fibre of your being._

Like a dam coming unblocked, Makoto realises there’s a yearning within him to experience all these things, to see the world through Haru’s eyes, to be closer, ever closer, to Haru -

Haru’s gaze softens as he looks at Makoto. Then his eyes narrow, suddenly. He puts his bowl and chopsticks down again.

“I need to tell you something my late grandmother said.”

“Your grandmother?” Makoto blinks in surprise. “You mean that thing about being a prodigy…”

“No, no, something about the water.”

“Your _grandmother_ talked to the water too?”

Makoto’s world as he knows it is turning inside out, seam by seam. Next thing he knows, Nagisa will be telling him that he’s been having conversations with his bath since he was three months old. Yes, thinks Makoto, that might explain some of his oddities.

Haru waves a hand in the air impatiently. “Yeah, that’s why I thought everyone did. Anyway, she used to tell me: _Don’t ever make deals with the water, Haruka_.”

“Deals?” Makoto repeats, slowly.

“Yeah. She always said nothing good comes out of it.”

“Haru, do you mean to say that the water is _evil_?”

All of Makoto’s old fears come rushing back, in one cold instant. A chill runs down his spine in the heated restaurant. He could swear he feels a breeze coming out of that envelope on the table, an icy sea wind reaching into him like a grasping hand.

 _There’s a monster in the water._ He’s always known it.

Haru's matter-of-fact voice shatters the icicles of silence, melts the creeping frost building up inside Makoto. “It’s not evil. It’s just water.”

“So what did your grandmother mean?”

Haru shrugs. He looks thoughtful. “I don’t know what she meant exactly. That’s just something she said. But… the water’s not human.”

“I think that much is obvious,” says Makoto, uncertain where this is going.

“The water and I accept each other. But it doesn't understand us. It doesn't see the world like human beings. That’s why you got this letter in the first place, right?” Haru picks up the envelope and hands it back to Makoto, who tucks it into the recesses of his bag this time. It feels heavier and heavier every time he holds it, like the water’s seeping through onto the paper.

“That means we don’t understand it either. I think my grandmother just meant… be careful. Remember, Makoto - ”

Haru holds his gaze steadily, eyes clouding over with grey, like an oncoming storm.

“Once you dive in, it will immediately bare its fangs. And attack.”

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is quite a departure from my other works. I never, never, really never thought I would write something like this, but I enjoyed my first ever hesitant foray into magical realism so much with "Don't Go Away" that I seriously started toying with the idea of something more ambitious for the genre. I wanted to explore ways I could introduce fantastical and surreal elements into a story while still keeping it rooted, tightly woven with canon.
> 
> and it all started with the really simple question, what if (arguably) the show's most famous line was literally real?
> 
> and then before I knew it I had Miyazaki on my mind and 9 chapters outlined and I spent like two whole days furiously writing to the neglect of sleep, work, food, exercise and other fics/meta.
> 
> I'm sorry world, I'll just leave this thing here now and walk away slowly...!


	2. meaningless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Haruka wonders about the meaning of things, and Makoto makes a decision.

_“Hey, Haru-chan!”_

_Haruka looks down from the top of the slide where he’s perched. Makoto’s climbing up the ladder, smiling at him, his cheeks pink from running around the playground._

_“Let’s join the swimming club together!”_

_Why would I want to do that? is Haruka’s first thought. He can swim wherever he wants to. Joining the club seems like a waste of time. What does he care for racing against others or taking part in activities?_

_“No. It’s troublesome,” says Haruka, sliding down so Makoto can take his place._

_Makoto watches him go, still clinging to the ladder. “But Haru-chan, you love to swim, don’t you?”_

_“I don’t love it that much,” says Haruka, looking back over his shoulder in annoyance. Makoto’s always doing this, making assumptions about Haruka, about what he loves, what he wants to do. If Makoto would just listen to the water once in a while, it would tell him how Haruka really feels about swimming._

_“If you want to join, then join by yourself,” he says to Makoto._

_There’s a tiny pause. When Makoto speaks again, his voice is serious._

_“Then I won’t go either.”_

_Haruka turns around._

_Makoto’s sitting in a low crouch, hands clasping the bars at the top of the slide, staring down at Haruka with a small frown on his face. Staring down at Haruka like he’s the only thing in the world he sees._

_Haruka feels his breath catch in his throat._

_“Why not?” he asks._

 

* * *

 

Makoto starts his Friday morning the classic way: by throwing his alarm clock across the room.

He never means to throw it so far. He just doesn’t know his own strength. He never has, as Rin’s loved to remind him, constantly, for eight years now. _A guy who wastefully swims with all his power._

As usual, the alarm clock lands somewhere near Makoto’s wardrobe and continues to chirp plaintively.

It takes Makoto an average of eight minutes and sixteen seconds to roll out of bed on any given day, starting from the second the alarm clock goes off; this is a number derived empirically by one Nanase Haruka, who consistently wakes up so much earlier than Makoto every time they stay the night at each other’s that in his boredom and his inestimable creativity, he’s made something of an experiment of it.

The science of Tachibana Makoto in the mornings.

(Even _Rei_ would balk at that.)

Haru has established several things over the last nine months. If there’s coffee brewing, and Makoto can smell it from his room, the average time taken reduces noticeably to three minutes and thirty-six seconds. If the radio is on and it’s a rock song he likes, it goes down to four minutes and fifty seconds, at least two minutes of which are spent in bed singing along in a half-awake stupor.

But what never fails, what works the best, is the sound of his ringtone; if his phone’s blaring at him, Makoto will sit bolt upright and answer it within two rings no matter how early in the morning it is.

“Why?” Haru had asked him, once.

“Because… I always think there might be an emergency. That something might have happened to my family. Or to you.”

Haru had been silent for a long time. “Even if I’m right here with you when it rings?”

“I can’t think that fast in the morning, Haru,” Makoto had said, with a laugh, drawing a smile from Haru in return.

After that, Haru had never used the phone call trick to get him up in the morning.

On the other end of the spectrum, if it’s an unfamiliar sound, like, say, Haru’s alarm clock, Makoto’s average wake-up time is extended to ten minutes and two seconds. If it’s a cold or rainy day, nine minutes and four seconds. And if Haru’s still in bed with him, no force in the world will get Makoto out.

Makoto rolls over in bed on this particular Friday morning to find the other half of it empty.

 _That’s right,_ he manages to think, blearily. _Haru has early morning training today._

After a few more insistent beeps from the neglected alarm clock, he blinks his eyes open with an effort. The world starts blurring into focus.

There’s something on his bedside table beside his lamp. Something that wasn’t there the night before.

 _Oh god,_ thinks Makoto, squeezing his eyes shut and open again, _don’t tell me water crawled out my bathroom and left me something weird…_

The thought makes him shudder. He can feel his heartbeat quicken in his chest as he reaches out, scrabbling blindly to pick up whatever it is and managing to knock his glasses to the ground in the process.

It’s metal, rounded and cool to the touch.

 _It’s a can._ Makoto rubs his eyes with his free hand as he brings it close to his face.

 _SUNTORY BOSS COFFEE / CAFE AU LAIT COFFEE DRINK,_ it says.

Makoto sits up. He’s totally awake now.

There’s a green post-it note on his wardrobe door. Makoto stretches his arms overhead, gets out of bed, goes over to the clock on the floor and turns off the alarm at precisely 7:05:13. He reads the note, still clutching the can of coffee.

 

_Makoto,_

_Good morning._

_I made breakfast. There’s buttered french toast on your counter. You should reheat it in your toaster oven before eating it._

_Also, I forgot to bring a spare towel with me for today’s training, so I grabbed your yellow stripey one. Sorry, I’ll return it tomorrow._

_Enjoy the coffee. It’s so sweet and milky it makes my teeth rot._

_p.s. text me how long it took you to get out of bed._

 

Makoto smiles as he picks up his phone from his desk to send Haru a message. _Five minutes and thirteen seconds._

It takes him eleven minutes and twenty seconds to brush his teeth, wash his face, stare blankly at the water running out of his tap, slap himself a few times to snap out of it, and put the toast in the oven before he sends a second text. _Thanks, Haru ^_^_

Only seven seconds to type and send this.

Makoto wonders idly, as he cracks the can of coffee open, how seven seconds can encapsulate the overflowing well of his feelings and the almost aching warmth in his heart; it’s not enough, never enough, with Haru, but - yet - it’s everything. There’s nothing more he wants to say. Nothing more he can say. Not in words, at least.

Perhaps this is how the water feels, thinks Makoto. Timeless and unbounded, a vast expanse beyond all possible human expression.

 

* * *

 

This semester, lectures end early on Fridays.

Makoto goes to lunch with four of his classmates. Every week, a different person gets to select the lunch venue. Today, it is Makoto’s turn, and he feels like comfort food, so he goes for the curry house two blocks down where they do a mean green curry with rice just the way Makoto likes it. A little sweet, a little spicy, not too much of anything.

It’s in the restaurant, when Makoto’s rifling round his bag for his wallet, that the blue envelope falls out and happens to land on Tanaka Sachiko’s lap.

Sachiko is a petite girl with long hair and glasses. She has four younger brothers and sisters, and her dream is to be a kindergarten teacher. One year ago, on the first day of university, she had introduced herself to Makoto by sitting down next to him in the lecture theatre and promptly spilling her coffee on his lap, a transgression she’s since proceeded to atone for by always saving him a seat and waving frantically with a “OI! MAKOTO!” every time she sees him walk through the doors.

Naturally, she pounces on the envelope. “Ooh, what’s this?”

“It’s nothing,” says Makoto, reaching for it.

“Like hell it’s nothing!” exclaims Sachiko, holding it above her head and gaping up at it. “It’s obviously from a girl. No guy has handwriting like this.”

“It’s not from a girl,” says Makoto. Well, that much is true.

“Oh, so it _is_ from a guy?” Sachiko gives him a knowing wink.

Makoto doesn’t answer. He tries to make another grab for the envelope, which fails; Sachiko has reflexes like a cat and she whips it just out of his reach at the last second.

Makoto crosses his arms and gives her his most pitiful frown. “Sachi-chan…”

“Ahhh, life is so unfair, Makoto,” says Sachiko, with an exaggerated sigh as she makes a big show of handing him back the envelope. “You get confessions from girls, you get confessions from guys, _and_ you already have such a cute boyfriend. I can’t stand it!”

Makoto wonders if he should disappoint Sachiko with the news that this one’s not a confession, but he can’t imagine how to explain what it _actually_ is, so he settles for a sheepish grin instead.

“What are you guys going on about there?”

Sachiko looks up at their classmate’s question. “Makoto got another love note. Who’s keeping the tally? Add one to the _guys_ column!”

Makoto lets out a long, slow sigh, resigning himself to at least one week’s worth of good-natured ribbing.

 

* * *

 

Friday ends with a quiet run round the neighbourhood at night.

Saturday is Skyping with his family, replying to an email from Rin, and looking up how many miles lie in the ocean between Japan and America.

Sunday is a phone call to Nagisa and going swimming with Haru, followed by an intrepid expedition to Takashimaya to buy a card. They pick out a design with a picture of the Japanese countryside, like the rolling fields in Iwatobi that they see out the train window, and sign it jointly.

Makoto only has black, blue and green pens, but fortunately, Haru’s brought his entire arsenal of art supplies to Tokyo, including a dazzling array of pens and markers in all colours of the rainbow.

Makoto picks out a violet pen. The nib is thick and inky, and leaves splotches on the card as he writes.

 

_There are more than 23,000 miles of water between us._

 

He pauses for thought.

“Careful, Makoto,” says Haru, watching him rest the pen in one spot, unmoving. “The ink will bleed through.”

That’s what water does, thinks Makoto. You can’t hold it. You can’t keep it in one place. Boundaries mean nothing, miles mean nothing, and ink will bleed through thick card like it’s not even there.

What would it be like to see the world through eyes like that?

He picks up his pen, and continues.

 

_There are more than 23,000 miles of water between us._

_But when I think of the four of us, swimming together, even though it’s only 400m, it feels like we could swim 23,000 miles and back._

_We’re with you in spirit all the way, Rei!_

 

Haru takes the card from him and reads it silently. Then he picks up his markers, and does what Makoto can’t.

He puts down a thousand words in shades of blue and grey. Makoto watches in fascination as the sea takes shape beneath quick strokes of deft, nimble fingers, light flecks of foams on the crest of waves. It looks so real that Makoto can almost smell the salt on the air.

Haru draws in the outline of their little port town, a faint sketch of the buildings that line the road down to the shore, with the stairs and the temple in the background atop a hill.

 _Keep swimming, Rei,_ is all he writes.

“I don’t think Rei has all that much time for swimming now, Haru,” Makoto remarks. “He’s working hard at improving his English there before he starts his university term.”

“There’s always time for swimming,” says Haru firmly.

They seal the envelope and put it in the post for Nagisa to include in his Rei-chan care package.

“How long does a parcel take to get from here to Los Angeles?” asks Haru, as they walk back to his place from the mailbox on the corner.

“Longer than here to Iwatobi…”

“I knew that,” says Haru, with a small roll of his eyes.

Makoto laughs. “I don’t know. Maybe two weeks?”

“That’s a long time.”

“It’s a long way away.”

They climb the stairs to Haru’s apartment in silence. Makoto doesn’t watch where he’s going, and nearly trips over a step.

Haru raises an eyebrow at him as he reaches out to take his hand. He doesn’t ask what the matter is, or if there’s something on Makoto’s mind; he knows he doesn’t need to.

“I was just wondering, Haru… if the water can talk to us, can it talk to Rei? Or to Rin, or Nagisa?”

“I don’t know,” says Haru, with a small, wry smile. “Until last night, I thought it talked to everyone.”

“What if we could speak with each other through the water?”

Haru turns to stare at him in impenetrable silence, unlocking his door with a loud _click_.

“I mean… instead of sending cards, or emails, what if I just told the water _hey, tell Rei we miss him_ , and he could get the message just like that the next time he’s in the shower?”

“You don’t tell the water to do things, Makoto,” Haru says, very slowly and patiently, as they take off their shoes and head to the kitchen to start dinner.

“Oh,” says Makoto.

Haru straps on his blue dolphin apron. “Pass me the pot in the cupboard above your head.”

Makoto senses the topic’s closed, and he obediently reaches up to get the pot for Haru, who then hands him a chopping board, a bunch of carrots and a knife without further preamble. But just as Makoto’s starting to get into a nice rhythm with this pleasantly menial task, Haru’s quiet, even voice breaks the silence once more.

“It’s not there for you or me, or anyone else. It doesn’t care.”

Makoto thinks of the envelope sitting on his dresser at home, and of his nice mailman, with the greying hair and two grown-up children.

 

* * *

 

_“Because it’s meaningless without you.”_

_Makoto’s words ring in Haruka’s ears as he sits in his tub that night, soaking in the warm bathwater._

_Meaningless. Meaningless._

_“Hey,” Haruka calls out in his mind, touching his fingers to the surface lightly._

_The water ripples around him._

_“What is the meaning of swimming, anyway?”_

_As usual, the water doesn’t give him any answer. Haruka’s learnt that he can try till his head hurts from silent yelling, but water is capricious and does what it wants. What it wants usually isn’t to entertain you._

_He sinks down further into the water, blowing small bubbles with his mouth. Each one pops in the space of less than a breath. Are they meaningless? Is their short existence worth nothing?_

_“What does it mean when something is meaningless?” he wonders idly._

**_strange human idea_ **

_Haruka starts at the sudden cold tingle on his skin._

**_meaningless. having no purpose or reason._ **

_Really, thinks Haruka, you answer a question like that, but not a question on the meaning of swimming?_

_Haruka slides his small body even further down, so his head is completely underwater. He opens his eyes, looking into a shapeless, formless blue, and watches his breath bubble from his mouth again._

_Haruka is nine years old and has known Makoto for five of those years, or so he’s told. He can’t remember the day the Tachibanas moved into the house down the stairs and his parents went over to greet the new neighbours, with a box of mochi and their young son in tow, but there’s photographic proof in a frame in their living room. In the picture, Haruka is staring at Makoto from outside the door, and Makoto’s smiling up at him and reaching out. An outstretched hand, extending past the threshold, inviting Haruka into his house, into his life._

_Haruka thinks that he would not be able to explain the meaning of their friendship, any more than he could explain the meaning of swimming._ _Does it need a meaning? Does Haruka need a purpose or reason to swim, or to be with Makoto?_

_“What does it mean when Makoto has no purpose or reason to swim without me?”_

_The water’s gone silent again, still as the koi pond on a calm, windless day._

 

* * *

 

Monday dawns with the sound of a light spring shower outside Makoto’s bedroom window, which only makes him curl up tighter in his blankets. Days like this are made for sleeping in.

Mondays are relatively quiet for Makoto. His lectures don’t start till a little later in the day, but he tries to use the mornings to catch up on work that invariably goes neglected over the weekend. Today, he has one paper to read, one essay outline to get started on, two books he’s reserved from the library that he needs to collect, and a letter to reply to.

Makoto goes through the comforting routine of making a fresh, hot cup of coffee and inhaling its scent as he leans against the kitchen counter, his mind pleasantly bleary and blank, staring out at the pattering raindrops.

_I am the rain and the storm._

Makoto eats a bowl of cereal, gets dressed in his white tee and blue collared shirt, picks out a plain khaki pair of slacks after some vacillation, and steps out of his apartment with his backpack slung over one shoulder and jacket on his arm.

He has a feeling, and sure enough, Uchida-san’s figure is visible at the end of the corridor. He keeps a respectful distance, walking slowly away from Makoto. His footsteps echo in the empty space around them.

“Uchida-san,” Makoto calls, running up behind him.

Uchida-san stops and turns. He gives Makoto a small bow. “Good morning, Tachibana-kun.”

“Good morning, Uchida-san. I, uh, I read the letter.”

Uchida-san nods, smiling gently.

“So, um…”

“As it said, Tachibana-kun, please don’t be alarmed.”

Uchida-san’s gaze is kind and patient. When Makoto hesitates, he continues.

“If you need more time…”

“No,” says Makoto, quickly, waving his hands in the air. “I don’t. I… I talked to Haru, and I thought about it, and - ”

“Ah, Nanase-san knows the water intimately,” Uchida-san remarks.

Makoto suddenly wonders how much Uchida-san really knows about Haru.

Makoto’s wallet has two clear pockets where he keeps photographs, so he sees them every time he opens his wallet. Two months ago, when Uchida-san had shown him photos of Mayuko and Kiyoshi, Makoto had shown him his family photo.

“Those are the twins,” he’d said, pointing at Ran on his back, and Ren crouching down in front of him. “They’re growing up really fast. It’s funny to think that before I know it, they’ll be bratty teenagers with an attitude… although I guess Ran already kind of has one.”

Uchida-san had nodded with an understanding twinkle in his eye. “Mayuko had an attitude problem from the day she was born!”

His gentle, knowing laughter was infectious, and Makoto couldn’t help the small chuckle that escaped his lips as well.

“And what about this other photo?”

“This? Ah… that’s Haru.”

“Your partner?”

“Mmm,” Makoto had said, with a nod. _Partner_ sounded so archaic, but it suited Uchida-san, somehow, to be using words like that.

“He looks like a kind person,” was all Uchida-san had said at that time, with a smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle, and Makoto had stared at him with amazement because no one ever said that about Haru just from a photo of him. It was always _he has such beautiful blue eyes_ , or _he looks so cool_.

“Haru is the kindest person I know,” he’d said softly, gazing down at the photo again before tucking his wallet back into his pocket, and waving goodbye to Uchida-san for the day.

Two months ago, it had been February and the winter’s chill had clung to Makoto like a cloak of mist, his breath thick and heavy in the air; now they’re in April and the promise of warmer days whispers lightly in his ear on the cool morning breeze. Before long, it'll be summer and they can swim in the sea again.

_Nanase-san knows the water intimately._

And Makoto realises, snapping back to the present moment with a start, that he’s never told Uchida-san what Haru’s last name is.

 _Maybe he just read about Haru in the papers somewhere._ It’s not improbable. Haru’s been mentioned a few times in the sports pages of nearly every major Tokyo paper, and his famous tendency towards laconic answers and cold stares seems to have served only to ignite media interest even further.

Somehow, though, Makoto knows that’s not the reason Uchida-san knows of Nanase Haruka.

He looks at his mailman, who’s still standing in front of him patiently, a genial smile on his face.

“I’m okay with it,” Makoto says.

Uchida-san’s expression doesn’t change. He continues to look at Makoto, like he’s expecting him to say more.

“I mean… I’ve been around water all my life, anyway,” says Makoto. “So. It’s okay. It's not a big deal.”

Uchida-san nods, once, and his gaze softens. “Thank you, Tachibana-kun.”

“It’s no trouble. Ah - I have to get going to the library, so - ”

“Of course! Don’t let me keep you.”

Makoto smiles and waves goodbye at Uchida-san. He heads past him towards the stairs.

“Ah, Tachibana-kun! Before I forget, I brought you this.”

Makoto stops and turns at the sound of Uchida-san's voice. He's rifling in his satchel, muttering  _now, where is it?_  under his breath.

A funny feeling suddenly settles in Makoto's stomach, and he wonders if he’s going to receive yet another mysterious envelope that turns his world inside out. 

“Here we go.”

Uchida-san looks up at Makoto and holds out a triangular object to him.

It’s an onigiri. A totally ordinary, pre-packed ball of rice and seaweed, still with the 7–11 sticker on it, and it’s salmon, Makoto’s favourite.

Makoto's world tilts a little on its axis, and spins back into alignment.

_Just another ordinary day, then. Just my friendly mailman giving me an onigiri in the morning._

"Thank you," he says, and takes it with a grateful smile.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought it would be nice to give a little tip of the hat to the director's remarks that Makoto would be popular with both guys and girls in uni.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading ♥ your comments and kudos are very much appreciated!


	3. your fear, my fascination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Makoto gropes in the dark for a handle on all this, and Haruka makes a promise to himself.

There is a lake on campus, visible from the library window. It’s shaped like nothing so much as a blob, and there are giant lilypads floating on it, pink flowers starting to bloom bright and blushing.

Makoto’s second lecture of the day ends at 3:15pm. He takes the shaded walkway between blocks, climbs two flights of stairs to hand in an assignment at the department office, has a brief, friendly chat with the admin lady there about the strange foibles of the computer lab’s temperamental printers, and stops for a short while to examine the bulletin board for notices.

There is a poster for an upcoming sports festival, a leaflet inviting all Physical Education majors to a talk from a visiting professor in kinesiology, a post-it about a lost notebook in classroom E201, and a note from someone in their third year looking for a study group. Makoto takes a photo of the talk details on his phone and emails it to himself so he’ll remember.

He sticks his head in the office to wave goodbye to the staff there, and heads back downstairs, crossing the courtyard towards the lake. It seems like just about the entire university population has had the same idea as him, on this lovely spring day.

 _Well,_ he thinks, _perhaps not exactly the same idea._

Then he wonders how many people here the water talks to as well.

Makoto manoeuvres himself round several groups of chatting students, finds a shady spot right by the bank of the lake, sits down, and takes out his onigiri.

He stares down into the dark depths of the water as he takes a bite of the seaweed and rice.

It’s a totally normal onigiri. It’s just as it looks. There’s nothing weird about it at all. It is like every single onigiri that Uchida-san has ever given to him, solid and comforting, and just what he needs in the middle of the day to power him through two hours of coaching at the club later.

On the surface of the water, grey-white clouds drift by in a light blue sky.

Makoto reaches out with his free hand and touches the middle of a cloud. It blurs and scatters at his fingertip. Tiny ripples spread out, and one of the small lilypad leaves floats away, slow and unhurried.

 _I guess you got my message,_ thinks Makoto, feeling foolish.

The water doesn’t respond. Makoto isn’t quite sure what to say next.

_And I guess you’re watching me. Okay._

He’s holding his breath without even realising it, staring hard at that one spot where his hand’s still touching the water.

A sudden flash of white whips beneath his fingers, and Makoto jumps. He draws back his hand in a hurry like something’s burning, smarting, the tips of his fingers tingling with a strange foreign heat -

It’s only a young koi fish.

Small and harmless, pale like the moon, with a splotch of orange just visible on the side of its belly as it swims away from Makoto.

Makoto breathes. The lingering scent of the morning’s rain shower is still in the air, thick on the grass, and the leaves on the trees.

The fish disappears into the distance, darting away beneath a lilypad.

 

* * *

 

It’s the silence that’s unnerving, that echoes in his ears.

“Coach Tachibana?”

Makoto blinks, and looks down into the wide-eyed gaze of ten-year old Himura Miki.

Miki-chan has short red hair, wears a yellow swimsuit and recently changed her goggles to match. She is a sight in sunset colours and a very confident swimmer for her age. She has been swimming since she was five years old.

Makoto has been coaching her and her class for a month. Miki-chan likes the backstroke best too.

“Yes, Miki-chan?”

“Uh, we’re all done with the ten-lap warmup, so what shall we do now?”

Makoto’s senses kick in, with a sudden, guilty start. He’s been spacing out. Again. He tries to clear his head with a quick duck underwater, then does a short demonstration of the breaststroke kick, a refresher for the students from the week before, and has them practise it with kickboards for a while.

The water laps around his feet as he climbs out and walks up and down the poolside, keeping an eye on the kids and their form.

He casts a quick glance up at the clock. The second hand ticks forward, inexorably.

On the far lane, Coach Akiyama is taking a class of older kids, all around twelve years of age and practising butterfly. He’s got them lined up at the starting block, preparing to take turns. Makoto doesn’t know the names of these students, but he knows all their faces. He sees them every week. They’re all here again today, eight of them, five boys and three girls. Like they are every Monday.

 _Splash._ A swimmer makes a graceful dive into the water and disappears into the spray.

Makoto counts the hours of silence in his head.

Nine hours. Sixteen minutes. Going on seventeen.

 _Can you hear me?_ thinks Makoto, looking down at the water. He takes a tentative step away from it, but just then one of his students swims past him and her kick sends a wayward wave right at his toes.

Just as it’s been all day, there’s no reply. The pool remains completely silent and inanimate. Like the lake on campus. Like the rain at his window.

Just water, water everywhere, going about its business as usual.

And a slow, creeping realisation dawns on Makoto, as he stares out at the width of the pool in front of him, that the silence is so unsettling because it shouldn’t be this way. Nothing is happening, nothing is changing, it’s all so _ordinary_ , as if he never got the letter, never spoke to Uchida-san, never had that conversation with Haru…

Makoto feels as if he is in a dream, except the dream is exactly like real life, and he doesn’t know where one ends and the other begins.

 

* * *

 

_Haruka watches Makoto dive into the water with a mighty splash._

_That’s Makoto’s dive. That’s Makoto’s stroke. Powerful and forceful, pushing forward with an immense strength beyond his years, like he always has. His freestyle is everything Haruka’s is not. It’s unrefined and raw and wasteful, but so overwhelming it blows you away, even if you can see all the things that are wrong with it._

_Matsuoka crouches by the starting block, watching Makoto swim with rapt attention. Haruka stands by him, silently._

_Droplets of water slide down his head and the back of his neck. Makoto reaches the opposite wall, and turns. He starts swimming back to them._

_Suddenly, everything tingles, and Haruka feels a chill to his bones._

_He narrows his gaze at the figure in the water, coming closer. Makoto's almost at the wall, barely a few metres to go, but time seems to slow as Haruka watches his body struggle through the water like quicksand, arms stretching forward helplessly, legs flailing…_

_Makoto’s hand, outstretched towards him._

_Haruka starts to reach out to take it, almost instinctively, but it’s too far away._

_Matsuoka beats him to the punch. He leaps into the water, and swims towards the spot where Makoto’s standing, frozen. Makoto stares down at the surface of the water. His limbs seem to have glued themselves in place, and his breath is coming in rough gasps, heaving with a sound that rips a ragged tear right through the middle of Haruka._

_“What happened, Tachibana?”_

_Matsuoka’s voice seems to snap Makoto out of his strange daze. He raises a hand slowly to his goggles, and lifts them above his head._

_Haruka strains to see his eyes. He can’t explain it. He just needs to see Makoto’s eyes right now, needs to see that comforting grass-green and know that everything is okay._

_Makoto looks up at Matsuoka. His lips curve upwards in a smile._

_His eyes don’t._

_Sorry,“ he says. ”I’m all right. It looks like I’m just in bad shape today."_

_Haruka can’t look at Makoto like this. Turning abruptly on his heel and averting his gaze, he walks away._

 

* * *

 

The water from the shower is cold.

Makoto normally can’t stand cold showers, but today, he feels like he needs one. He turns the tap slowly, deliberately, towards the blue marker on the right side, and shudders as the drops spill down his back. The icy sensation doesn’t leave much of his senses free for daydreaming, wondering, or overthinking. He’s too busy quieting his chattering teeth and trying to breathe.

 _Remember to breathe._ That’s the first thing he always teaches his students, after _don’t be afraid of the water._

It’s still true, isn’t it? The water hasn’t changed. It’s the same water that it was yesterday, and the day before, and it’s always been like this, as far as Haru knows, which makes it as far as Makoto knows too. Nothing’s different, not really. Nothing at all.

There’s nothing to fear, then, is there?

Makoto turns his face upwards and lets the cold water hit his forehead, his cheeks, his nose. He blinks his eyes shut, and opens his mouth for air without thinking, choking and sputtering when he gets a mouthful of water instead.

_Don’t be afraid of the water._

Makoto hears those words in his mind, in his own voice. His most calming, soothing voice. How many times has he said it? To Ran, to Ren, to Hayato, to Miki-chan, to all the kids in the club who have crossed his path one way or another.

A tiny smile tugs at the corners of his lips. _I’m being silly, aren’t I?_

And Makoto realises then, with a start, that this is one of the first thoughts all day that he’s thought to himself and not some body of water somewhere.

He laughs under his breath, a low, throaty chuckle echoing through the empty shower room.

As he shampoos and rinses his hair, Makoto can’t help wondering what the water makes of all this, if it’s really observing him and listening to every thought he’s thrown at it. It feels like he’s been flinging his words wildly into nothingness, watching them crack and fall apart as they hit the surface of the water. Shards and fragments, floating like debris. Makoto doesn’t know how to do things by halves. He’s been reaching with all his might, searching for something to pin this new surreality on, and he’s been battering down at the water’s door like a muscle-bound idiot, when really all he had to do was listen to himself.

_Don’t be afraid._

_Remember to breathe._

Water isn’t something you can tear apart with brute strength. It’s subtle and slippery and simply flows round your clenched fists like they’re not there.

 _Why did you pick me?_ Makoto wonders, turning the heat on the water up. _You already have Haru. Haru’s so much more in tune with the water than me. Why me?_

Just as he’s about to turn off the tap, he hears a rippling whisper in his ear, and he freezes.

 

* * *

 

_Haruka stands in the showers with only one thought on his mind._

_Why do you swim, Makoto?_

_But he knows. He’s known for three years now, even though he’d only heard those words once before, standing at the bottom of a slide in a playground, in bygone days._

_“It’s meaningless without you.”_

_He is Makoto’s purpose and reason for swimming. He is Makoto’s meaning. And somehow, it’s enough for Makoto that he, Haru, Haru-chan, is there, even though - even though -_

_Resting his head against the wall, he directs a fierce thought at the water with all his heart. “You know, don’t you?”_

_The water continues to pour down his back steadily, steaming up the shower room._

_“You know. You know Makoto’s afraid of you.”_

_Because he is. Haruka kicks himself mentally for not seeing it before today, for not realising. He remembers the parade of white and the deathly quiet of that late morning by the pier. He remembers the feel of Makoto’s hand tightening around his, the look on Makoto’s face, those downward-sloping brows and the horror in his eyes._

_He’d seen it there again today. That horror._

**_afraid?_ **

_The water bubbles in his ear as it rolls down past his cheek._

_It doesn’t sound perturbed. It doesn’t sound guilty. It sounds sort of blank, and maybe a little bit puzzled by the sound of the word._

_Haruka sighs. “Afraid.”_

**_why?_ **

_“Ask him yourself,” thinks Haruka, brusquely. This story isn’t his to tell._

_The water goes silent then, but Haruka can feel its curiosity in every drop on his skin, and goosebumps start to form._

_Haruka knows he will never talk Makoto out of swimming, if Makoto’s got his mind set on it. That’s how it is. That’s how it goes. Makoto decides what he wants, and Haruka ends up by his side somehow. Even if what he wants is to do something that paralyses him to the very core._

_What if I stopped swimming? Haruka wonders. Makoto says it’s meaningless without me. So if I stopped, he’d stop too. And I would never have to see that look on his face again._

_His heart clenches at the thought. He thinks of Makoto’s determined face at the top of the slide._

_Makoto wants to swim._

_Haruka doesn’t understand. But if Makoto wants it, then Haruka will do what he can, everything he can, within his power, even if his power’s only so small and insignificant -_

_He’ll be there for Makoto._

_He’ll protect him._

 

* * *

 

The hours of silence turn into days, and Makoto is almost used to it now.

“It seems like life isn’t all that different,” he says to Haru.

Haru casts him a curious sidelong glance. “Why would it be?”

It’s Friday evening, and Haru’s managed to get out of training early to join Makoto for his weekly jog round the park near his house. Haru’s more in shape than Makoto and running is part of his regular regime, but Makoto’s the naturally faster runner, with stronger legs, so they keep pace with each other well.

The weather’s taken a turn for the chilly. Haru’s speeding up, probably unconsciously, to keep warm.

“Because I talked to Uchida-san?”

“Who - oh, your mailman,” says Haru.

“Yeah. But after that… well, nothing much happened,” says Makoto, with a small laugh.

“It’s only been five days.”

A strong wind suddenly blows at them, and Makoto zips up his jacket as he runs. They pass under the warm yellow glow of a street light. Makoto sees the shadow of a smile on Haru’s lips.

“Five days is nothing to water,” Haru remarks. “It’s been around for billions of years.”

There’s an odd, wary note creeping into his voice as he looks at Makoto again, from the corner of his eye. “Don’t think of it as human, Makoto. You can’t make that mistake.”

“Well, it’s taking a while to get used to thinking of it as anything but water…”

“It’s still water,” says Haru. “What do you expect from it?”

“I guess… well, I guess that’s it, really,” Makoto muses. “I didn’t know what to expect, when I first spoke to Uchida-san and told him it was okay. So I was jumping at everything. I couldn’t look at water without wondering if it was going to start blabbering at me. I kept trying to reach out and talk to it. I got so distracted during my classes at the pool this week, Haru, it was terrible.”

“You couldn’t be terrible at coaching if you tried. Also, water doesn’t blabber,” says Haru. “It’s not that talkative. Or good with words.”

“Yeah, I found out. I think Uchida-san probably helped to phrase that letter I got.”

“Oh, so you’ve heard the water?” Haru asks, raising a curious eyebrow at him.

“Mmm,” says Makoto, thoughtfully. “Just the one time. When I wasn’t even expecting anything.”

Haru nods. “It does that.”

Makoto feels a tiny drop of water land on his face, then another. A third one tickles his eyelashes. He blinks.

“It’s starting to rain,” he says.

“Yeah.” Haru looks up. “Those clouds look bad. Let’s turn around.”

They’re at the far end of the park, just about as far from Makoto’s apartment as they can possibly be. In front of them, the drizzle turns into steady sheets of pounding raindrops, a watery curtain illuminated by the street lights.

“Ah, it’s getting heavier…”

Next to him, Haru puts up the hood of his sports jacket without a word. Makoto follows suit. They run side by side in silence for a while, the sound of the rain filling the space between them.

“Do you want to know?” Makoto asks, raising his voice so Haru can hear him. “What the water said to me?”

Haru turns to look at him, but his gaze is shaded by the hood and the rain, and Makoto can’t see him clearly. When he speaks, he’s as soft as always. Makoto has to strain to hear the words.

“Only if you want to tell me. It doesn’t really matter. It’s okay if you don’t want to say.”

Makoto thinks back to that disembodied voice in the shower, ghosting past his ear, and feels the cold pricking on his skin again. _Maybe it’s just the rain,_ he thinks, in a futile attempt to make the creeping, chilling sensation fade away, to bring the warmth back into his bones.

He shivers and hugs himself tight, quickening his pace as much as he dares to on this slippery road.

“I do want to tell you, Haru. It was a little weird. I mean, not that water talking to me isn’t weird… well, I guess it’s normal for you, but it’s not yet normal for me, but - ah, my words are getting kind of jumbled up.”

Makoto takes a deep breath, and tries to start again, but he’s cut off by Haru.

“Weird?”

Makoto turns to see Haru raise his head and step closer to him. Haru’s face is visible now, a spark of concern in his eyes. “What do you mean, weird?”

“Well, it said - ”

Makoto never gets to finish his sentence.

At that exact moment, Haru steps into a puddle of water, sending raindrops flying up round his shoe -

and proceeds to vanish from sight -

right in front of Makoto’s eyes.

 

* * *

 

**_why you?_ **

**_tachibana makoto_ **

**_i was told you were afraid of me. and yet_ **

**_you tell young humans not to fear me  
_ ** **_you encourage them to swim_ **

**_you are fascinating, tachibana makoto_ **

**_i wish to learn more about your feelings  
_ ** **_and your fear_ **

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, it, uh... looks like things took a turn for the dramatic suddenly?
> 
> Here is the [relevant chapter in _High Speed!_](http://janeypeixes.tumblr.com/post/56465704187/heres-the-first-half-of-chapter-3-also-im) that Haru's flashback references, in case you are interested.
> 
> Thank you for reading! ♥ your comments and kudos keep me going!


	4. how to save a drowning victim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Makoto has the theory down pat, but finds the practice a little more difficult than he'd bargained for.

_“Can the next person get over here?” the silver-haired boy next to the Samezuka captain calls._

_Haruka watches Ryugazaki grit his teeth and stare down at his feet. He’s been fidgeting all this while, eyeing the pool warily, like it might bite him._

_“Well… you might as well,” says Makoto, with an encouraging smile._

_Makoto’s just trying to help. Haruka knows that. But this Ryugazaki doesn’t even want to swim, and the simple fact of the matter is that nothing can save someone who doesn’t want to be near the water. It knows. It always knows._

_Ryugazaki swallows. “Fine!” he spits out, taking off his glasses._

_Nagisa’s nearing the end of his lap. The water wraps round him gently and teasingly as his arms stretch out, and his shape blurs beneath the surface._

_Ryugazaki puts on his cap and goggles with unsteady, shaking hands._

_Haruka has a funny feeling in his stomach about this. As Ryugazaki passes him by on the way to the starting blocks, he says the only thing he can say, the only thing he knows how to say to help this boy now._

 

* * *

 

The first thing Makoto thinks is, _if this is a joke, it’s not funny._

The second thing Makoto thinks is, _right, that’s enough now, you can give him back any time._

There’s no third thing, nothing even vaguely coherent, at least; just the lack of Haru everywhere suddenly, leaving him only with a vague, blank incomprehension and - bizarrely enough - the protocol for how to save a drowning person, kicking in like autopilot.

 

_Step 1: Call for help._

 

“Anyone?” Makoto whispers, under his breath. “Are you there? Are you listening?”

 

_Dial 119 for the ambulance._

 

Makoto doesn’t have his phone with him. He doesn’t bring it out when he runs.

He looks around. There isn’t a payphone in sight, of course, and even if there was, Makoto is fairly certain that this is not a situation that any emergency service can help with.

He imagines dialling 110. _Hello, police? My boyfriend’s been kidnapped. By a puddle of rainwater. No, there’s no ransom note. Why, yes, water is in fact capable of writing, would you like to see the proof in my apartment?_

They’ll be calling an ambulance for him next and checking him in for delusions.

 

_Step 2: Reach._

_If you are in a safe position and cannot be pulled in by the victim, lie flat on the floor and stretch your hand towards them.  
If your arm cannot reach them, use a towel, or get into the pool and brace yourself at the edge with your other hand to extend your reach._

 

Makoto crouches down to look at the puddle. His reflection stares back up at him, blurry and rippling as the rain continues to fall. Behind him, the blinking street lamp winks in and out of sight on the water surface.

Makoto has no idea if he can be pulled in by the victim. Process dictates that he should be looking for a tree branch or something sturdy to reach with, rather than his hand. But perhaps, this time, he wouldn’t mind being pulled in.

He touches a finger, cautiously, to the very edge of the water. Nothing happens.

“Haru,” he calls. “It’s me.”

He takes a deep breath and sticks his whole hand in. But there’s nothing beneath the water’s surface, no touch of warmth, only the rough, hard pavement and the squelchy mud towards the side of the road.

 

_Step 3: Throw._

_Look for the safety ring attached to a long rope. Throw it towards the victim and ask him/her to grab it, then pull them in._

 

_Step 4: Row._

_If the victim is too far and neither reach nor throw methods work, take a boat out.  
Ensure you bring a safety ring with you if possible._

 

Makoto has neither a safety ring nor a boat, so these steps are a dead end.

He takes a deep breath.

Calmly, rationally, he moves right on to -

 

_Step 5: Go_

_If all else fails, swim._

 

Makoto studies the puddle in front of him.

He knows it doesn’t go particularly deep. Is swimming an option? What would happen if he put a foot in it, like Haru did?

He dips the toe of his shoe into the puddle, bracing himself to be sucked in, like entering a whirlpool. But nothing happens.

 

_Step 6: ???_

 

There is no step 6.

Step 5 is the last resort. The very last resort. If Step 5 doesn’t succeed…

It simply remains for the rescuer to pray that they don’t die along with the victim.

 

 _Give first aid to the victim immediately._  
_Feel for a pulse.  
_ _Perform CPR._

 

Makoto’s mind forks abruptly and rattles on like a bullet train, tearing through the fog, trying desperately to cling on to the remnants of logic and reason and how things should be, to the illusion that he can do what he’s trained for - that he can save a life, he can drag someone back into this world, from the clutches of the water -

Only it seems he’s run out of steps.

 _I’m going to die along with the victim,_ Makoto thinks.

 

* * *

 

_“Don’t underestimate the water,” says Haruka, softly._

_Because the water is alive. The water is watching you. And the water knows when you’re an enemy._

 

* * *

 

Makoto stands up and stuffs his hands into his pockets. They’re freezing, and the rain’s not getting any lighter. It pounds down and echoes round his ears like a thunderstorm. Inside his damp pockets, he clenches his fists so hard that his nails leave little crescent-shaped marks on the inside of his palms.

“Haru…?” he calls out.

Perhaps if Makoto says his name enough times, Haru will reappear, as if by some magical summons. Perhaps the sound of Makoto’s voice alone will be enough to bring him home.

“Haru.”

Any time, now.

“ _Haru._ ”

His voice cracks. The rain continues to fall.

“Haru!” Makoto yells, at the top of his lungs.

A cyclist coming up from behind gives Makoto a curious look. As his head turns, he zips right through the middle of that puddle and sends a spray of water right at Makoto’s bare legs. The splash hits his shins like an icy blast.

Makoto jumps back and lets out a strangled gasp, watching with horror as the bicycle wheel cleaves the puddle in two. It’s brutal and sudden, and the surface shatters into so many tiny, crystalline raindrops, flying everywhere, like shards of broken glass.

“Ah, I’m sorry!” the cyclist calls apologetically over his shoulder, disappearing into the distance.

Makoto doesn’t care about being wet. He doesn’t care about being splashed. But with the water in that puddle gone, smashed into a million little pieces on the road - with the bicycle tearing right through the spot where Haru was standing -

It’s not just him anymore. It’s not just him going crazy on his own and talking to himself and failing completely to effect a standard drowning rescue. There is officially an independent witness that Nanase Haruka has disappeared from this park, on this day, at this time in the evening; that his existence has ceased to be _present_ beside Makoto, that a bicycle can ride through where he should be.

“What have you done to Haru?” he says out loud, staring at the water pooling round his feet. The sound of his own voice terrifies him; he speaks without thinking and he’s calm, dangerously calm, teetering on the fine knife’s edge between madness and sanity.

He turns his face skywards and looks directly at the dark clouds above, rain falling onto his eyelashes, trickling down his cheek. It feels like tears. But Makoto doesn’t cry; not now, not at a moment like this.

Makoto’s a cold, hard, dry-eyed pillar of rock when the world’s going to hell, the very antithesis of Rin, who cries even when the world is beautiful.

Makoto can’t cry, because he has to be strong.

“What did Haru ever do?” he whispers. “Haru loves water. Why would you do this to him?”

He hears the answer all around him, pouring down past his ears in surround sound. 

**_nanase haruka owes us a debt._ **

“A _debt_?” Makoto repeats in disbelief. “What do you mean, a debt?”

**_he made a deal_ **

“That can’t be,” says Makoto.

He remembers that night in the restaurant, and the words that Haru’s grandmother left with him, all those years ago. _“Don’t ever make deals with the water, Haruka.”_

“You’re lying,” he says, raising his voice. “Haru wouldn’t do that.”

**_i do not understand what you mean by lying_ **

“Lying - lying is when you - when you say something that isn’t true.”

 _Why am I talking out loud like this?_ Makoto wonders, as a couple sharing an umbrella pass by him and glance over at the sound of his muttering. _You can hear me even in my head, can’t you?_

“Hi… do you need an umbrella? It’s not very big, but you can share ours. You look soaked.”

Makoto looks up into concerned eyes. The couple have paused in their tracks, standing right in that puddle, and the guy's holding out their umbrella towards him slightly.

Makoto feels a _run while you can!_ welling up in his throat. He swallows, and tries to smile. He can feel his lips curving in an unnatural fashion. He’s glad for the darkness.

“It’s okay. I’m… I’m running home. Thank you.”

Belatedly, it occurs to him that he has to make good on his words while these strangers are watching; so Makoto forces himself to pick up one foot and put it front of the other, then repeat the motion, until he’s suddenly sprinting down this slippery pavement with no mind as to basic safety.

His stomach gives a low rumble, then, and he thinks of the dinner for two waiting in his apartment. Teriyaki chicken with rice and vegetables, and an extra piece of saba for Haru.

 _How ridiculous,_ he thinks, with a low, bitter laugh, the sound choking itself out of his throat. _At a time like this, I’m thinking about food?_

The water seems to have gone silent. But just as he reaches his doorstep, just as he’s about to get out of the treacherous rain, that rippling voice ghosts past his ear again out of nowhere.

 _ **i do not understand the purpose of saying something that is not true**  
_ _**there are more fascinating truths in this world than there are untruths**_

**_did you know that the amount of water on earth has stayed the same for two billion years_ **

Makoto almost feels like laughing at the absurdity of it all. Now they're into Water Fun Facts and Haru's not even around to enjoy them.

“Forget that,” he says, out loud. “What kind of deal did Haru make?”

There’s a distinct change of tone in the reply, a chilling edge that makes Makoto's hair stand on end and his skin tingle.

**_deals are secret, tachibana makoto_ **

“Tell me,” says Makoto, voice dropping low and quiet.

There’s no reply, this time, but the rain seems to pound down more forcefully on the hood of his jacket, and Makoto feels the raindrops stinging his arms through the polyester, like a thousand waspish pinpricks.

 

* * *

 

Makoto calls Haru twenty-three times that night, in between sleepless fits.

Every single time, he gets the same message.

_The user you have dialled is not available. Please try again later._

It’s a nice breezy night after the rain, and he has the windows open and the fan on, but Makoto feels like he’s drowning, drowning in a pool of his own cold sweat.

If he falls asleep, he’ll have nightmares, and Haru isn’t here tonight to hold him.

Makoto stares at the empty screen on his phone.

He presses “1” on his speed dial for the twenty-fourth time.

 

* * *

 

_Haruka is furious._

_What did I tell you, Rei? he thinks, as he tears off his shirt and dives into the heaving swell of the sea. The first time you swam. What did I tell you?_

_Don’t underestimate the water._

_You didn’t listen. Not to me. Not to the water. Well, look what’s happened now._

 

* * *

 

The morning dawns with a yellow glow and a sound that isn’t Makoto’s alarm clock.

_ring ring_

In that moment, it’s the most beautiful wake-up call Makoto has ever heard.

_ring ring_

He reaches out with a frantic, scrabbling hand and flips his phone open. “Hello?!”

“Mako-chan?”

“…Oh. Nagisa.”

Makoto slumps down onto his bed, staring at the ceiling, with his phone pressed to his ear.

There’s a brief pause on the other end of the line. “Mako-chan, what’s wrong?”

“Haru is…”

“Ahhh! You were expecting Haru-chan to call you! That’s why you sound so disappointed that it’s me.” Makoto can hear the grin on Nagisa’s face, from miles away in Iwatobi. “Well, training camp is tough, Mako-chan! Haru-chan’s probably in the pool right now!”

_in the pool right now_

_in the pool_

_in the water_

_water_

_Haru_

“Wait,” says Makoto. He has a pounding headache at the back of his skull. He raises his free hand to rub his eyes, and hears Haru in his mind, instinctively. _Makoto, don’t do that. You’ll make your shortsightedness worse._

The twisting feeling in his gut intensifies.

“Haru’s at a training camp?” he asks Nagisa.

“Did you forget? You’re a terrible boyfriend, Mako-chan.”

Nagisa’s words are casual and teasing and just Nagisa being Nagisa, but they cut into Makoto like a jagged knife.

_I’m a terrible boyfriend. I should have taken better care of Haru._

He claps one hand over his mouth, unthinking, feeling so lightheaded he might throw up. His eyes hurt.

“Mako-chan? Hello?”

“…yeah. Sorry,” he says, weakly. “I’m still here.”

“Mako-chan, you’re really making me worried… are you lonely? Should I come down? I can come down! Right now! It only takes six hours on the train!”

“It’s okay, Nagisa. I just had a bit of a rough night.”

“Nightmare?” says Nagisa, with understanding.

“Sort of. Did you call me for something?”

“Ah, yes! Rei-chan wanted to arrange a Skype date! Are you and Haru-chan free next weekend?”

“I…”

Makoto’s voice dries up in his throat. He coughs.

“I’m free,” he says. “Um… can I get back to you about Haru?”

“Mako-chan! I thought you would know Haru-chan’s schedule just like _that_ , bam!”

Makoto takes a deep breath to calm himself. “Things are a little, uh - ”

“Oh my god…” Nagisa’s voice goes unnervingly quiet. There are a few moments of silence before he speaks again.

“Did you have a fight?”

“ _What?_ " Makoto exclaims. "No!"

Nagisa barrels on, plaintive and pleading, as though he hadn’t heard. “Please don’t fight, Mako-chan, I don't think we could stand it if you two - ”

“Nagisa, we did not have a fight,” says Makoto, firmly. “I just… don’t know where Haru will be next weekend.”

His voice shakes, and he swallows, and he knows that Nagisa’s caught it. Nagisa is too sharp to miss something like this, even over a phone line.

There’s a pause, then a small, resigned sigh. “Okay. Let me know! Take care and call me anytime, okay?”

“Mmm. Thanks, Nagisa,” says Makoto, and he means it, in spite of everything.

He hangs up, rolls over and hugs his pillow, still clutching his phone with one hand, staring at a familiar blank wall.

Makoto sleeps on the wall side of the bed, because it makes him feel safer to be enclosed. Haru sleeps on the open side so that, as the early riser, he can get out of bed easily.

Experimentally, Makoto slides his body over to Haru’s side of the bed. The sudden vastness of the space around him makes his breath tighten in his chest. He sits up dizzily, rubbing his eyes, and looks down at his hand.

The notification light on his phone stays dull and unblinking. Makoto calls Haru again.

_The user you have dialled is not available. Please try again later._

 

* * *

 

It takes Makoto thirty minutes to get to Haru’s house if he takes the bus, twenty if he runs, and ten if he cycles really hard and fast.

Makoto still hasn’t quite got used to the strange vagaries of city transport, or the fact that his own feet can move him faster than the traffic. But the bus between his apartment and Haru’s takes a circuitous route that, on a better day, would be called _scenic_ ; it skirts the edge of the park, passes by a pastry shop with a pink signboard and the most wonderful smells coming out of it, and from a distance, Makoto can spot the sports complex near Haru’s place where he has his daily training. That’s how he knows he’s nearing, and that’s how he knows to take the headphones off and get out of the bus at the next stop.

But today, Makoto takes his bike. Today, he doesn’t have twenty minutes to waste on sightseeing.

Makoto bashes right through traffic almost blindly, sprints up the stairs and down the corridor to Haru’s door, and nearly drops the spare key as he’s fumbling around in his pocket.

He checks the bathroom first of all, then the bedroom. Both are empty. Neat as a pin, the way Haru likes it.

_Okay._

It’s not like he’d expected the water to give Haru back overnight, but still -

Hope is a cruel thing sometimes, thinks Makoto, as he crosses the living room towards the kitchen.

There is a note stuck to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a butterfly. It is a note with emergency numbers on it. Makoto takes a photo of it and saves it on his phone. Then he dials one of them. The phone rings a few times before there’s an answer, in a low, mildly irritated grunting voice.

“Hello? Who’s this?”

“Hello Sawada-san, sorry to be calling you so suddenly on a Saturday morning, this is Tachibana Makoto - ”

“Oh!” The voice grows friendlier, suddenly. “Nanase’s friend! I met you at the last tournament, yes?”

“Yes. Thank you for answering my call. I was wondering, um, if you’ve heard from Haru.”

“What? Isn’t he on some bonding retreat with the national team? He’s skipping out on this weekend’s university team practice because of it.”

Makoto gathers that Coach Sawada is none too pleased by this state of affairs.

“Ah - yes - I just haven’t been able to reach him, so I wondered if… never mind, it’s okay.”

“Young love,” says Sawada, with a guffaw. “Can’t be without each other for 48 hours without pining, eh?”

"Yeah," says Makoto, weakly. "Pining."

 

* * *

 

_Makoto’s body is cold when Haruka reaches it and wraps his arms around him. He’s still and unmoving. He’s not even struggling any more, just a deadweight hanging off Haruka, drenched in water. There's a stray clump of seaweed tangled round his foot. Haruka flicks it off with his toes and starts swimming. It's like wading through a thick, murky bog._

_God, Makoto, thinks Haruka. If you die here and now, I’ll never forgive you. Come back to me._

_He struggles against the current to bring Makoto back to shore. He’s dimly aware of Rei somewhere behind him, and Nagisa swimming out with all his might, but right here, right now, all he sees is the closed eyelids of the boy in his arms, a dark curtain over the green._

_Green is the grass in spring and the leaves on the trees. Green is life._

_Haruka doesn’t know what to do when he can’t see Makoto’s eyes._

_“Please,” he begs the water, out loud, as he swims back, inch by painful inch. “Let him be okay.”_

_He’s just saying it out of habit, talking to the water when it’s all around him like this and there’s nothing else he can do but push forward, with all the helpless instinct of a lost child._

_He doesn’t expect a reply, and nearly chokes on a mouthful of saltwater when he hears it, sudden and inviting. The water around him seems to heat up with an unearthly glow._

**_will you make a deal?_ **

 

* * *

 

**_i have observed that you do that sometimes._ **

The water’s voice is ten times louder when Makoto is in the pool.

He freezes up, and feels his body start to tilt awkwardly, sinking downwards. _What are you talking about?_

**_you say things that are not true._ **

It takes Makoto ten overhead strokes and a touch of his fingertips on the wall before he remembers the words they'd exchanged last night.

 _I do not lie,_ he thinks fiercely.

**_sometimes you say that you are okay, but your biological manifestations indicate otherwise. is this not lying?_ **

“Give Haru back or shut up,” Makoto mutters, out loud.

He kicks off the wall and starts plowing ahead with a savage butterfly stroke. It’s not one he uses often, but it’s the most physically demanding, and takes the most out of him in terms of pure concentrated energy. His mind can’t wander when he’s doing butterfly, or he’ll lose rhythm.

As he dips his head back into the water, he hears a bubbling in his ears that’s almost amused.

Makoto does four more laps before he exhausts himself and collapses against the wall. He leans his head on the edge of the poolside, breathing heavily.

The water whispers.

**_will you make a deal?_ **

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will he? Won't he? Will Haru ever get to hear the rest of Water Fun Facts?
> 
> Thank you for reading! your comments and kudos make me feel all glowy inside :)


	5. teach me how you feel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Haru suffers an unfortunate lapse of memory.

Makoto opens his eyes to grey sheets and the smell of grilled fish.

For a second, he thinks he is back in Iwatobi, until he spies the plain off-white walls, the blinds on the windows in place of blue curtains, and the cherry wood desk in the wrong corner of the room, darker and redder than the walnut brown of Haru’s desk in his old home.

This is not Iwatobi. This is thousands of miles away. This is Tokyo.

Makoto blinks, and sniffs the air lightly again, wondering if he’s dreaming.

It’s _definitely_ saba.

It’s definitely Haru, then.

Makoto can barely breathe.

 

* * *

 

Haru’s apartment was arranged for him by his university. It is almost exactly 400m away from his training ground, a pleasant walk on a cool spring day. It has a small living room, an open kitchen, and a bathroom with an unreasonably large tub that Makoto is sure isn’t standard issue, but that he has never discovered the secret to.

It was the first question he’d asked Haru over one year ago, when they’d first moved to Tokyo, and Makoto had gone over to help with Haru’s unpacking.

“How do you have such a huge tub?”

“It’s not huge. It’s normal,” Haru had said, shooting Makoto a look out of the corner of his eye, as though it were an asinine question.

“It’s not normal. Have you seen the tub in my apartment?”

Makoto is certain that everything about living quarters in Tokyo is scaled down to at least 70% of Iwatobi’s. The bedroom is 70% the size of his own back home, the kitchen 60%, and the bathtub a mere 50%. Makoto considers himself extremely fortunate to even have a bathtub instead of just a functional shower.

“Your tub is unnaturally small. Go sit in the living room and don’t get underfoot.”

And that, as they say, had been the end of that, and Makoto had got so fidgety sitting in the living room doing nothing that he had attempted to make himself useful by boiling water for tea, only to be informed by Haru - with something that _almost_ looked like a wry smile behind the exasperation - that he had yet to actually buy any mugs or cups and Makoto would have to run out to Daiso right this very moment to remedy the situation before the water got cold.

Last Christmas, Haru’s parents had visited and brought him a set of brown ceramic teacups with ridges on their sides. They sit, pristine and waiting for guests, in a corner of Haru’s kitchen cupboard. There are two white mugs permanently left out on the counter, one with a green stripe, and one with a purple one.

(Daiso had run out of blue, that day.)

Nagisa calls Haru’s flat _unacceptably spartan_ and can be counted on to bring some small knickknack to liven it up every time he visits, which is why there is a magnet shaped like a butterfly on Haru’s fridge holding up the emergency numbers, just beyond the edge of Makoto’s vision right now. He sees an orange wingtip poking out from behind an apron-clad bare shoulder.

Makoto opens his mouth to try and put all his feelings of the past thirty-six hours into words, and what comes out is, “You’re wearing your apron over your swimsuit again.”

Black hair. Long neck. Leanly muscled arms.

_Haru._

The name is on the tip of Makoto’s tongue.

_Haru. Haru._

A flash of blue peeps out from under that sideways fringe, falling over a low forehead, down to the bridge of an impossibly pert and adorable nose.

“I felt like soaking in the tub this morning,” says a voice coolly, over the sounds of sizzling fish.

Makoto takes a step closer, then another. He reaches out and touches the slender wrist in front of him with the lightest of caresses, afraid his fingers will pass right through and it will turn out to be nothing more than the world’s most realistic mirage.

A heart-shaped face turns upwards to look at him, with slightly raised eyebrows. “Watch the oil. It might spatter.”

When Makoto finally lets out the breath he’s been holding, it comes out like a whispered prayer.

“Haru.”

Haru glances at him again. “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“It feels like I’m seeing one right now,” murmurs Makoto.

 

* * *

 

_Haruka’s whole body is tense, humming like a tightrope in the wind._

_The whistle blows._

_He jumps. Less than a second later, he feels the water change._

_Rin._

_This is the water when Rin’s in it. It’s angry and hot and makes Haruka’s skin tingle with the blazing light of a thousand suns, swirling round his muscles, surging forward wildly, whispering in his ear; nothing coherent beyond GO and SWIM and FASTER uttered like sudden thunderclaps, and flashes of fiery red in the deep blue._

_Rin’s words echo in his mind as Haruka pushes forward with all his might._

_No one else matters. This fight is between you and me.  
_ _I look forward to it._

_And in this moment, Haruka, with his arms on fire and his heart pounding in his chest, knows for sure what he’d only suspected up to now; he, too, has been looking forward to it._

_He's still ahead, but slowly, surely, he senses Rin pulling up to him and forging onwards with an unbelievable power. Rin’s no longer behind him - no longer next to him - he’s looking at Rin’s legskins, at Rin’s feet as they kick away from him -_

_Rin hits the wall first. He turns, and charges off into the home stretch._

_Haruka’s eyes widen as his world goes crimson for a split second, a row of sharp teeth and a savage grin searing themselves into his vision._

 

* * *

 

Makoto retraces a familiar path in the park, with careful, deliberate footsteps. He passes by a mossy rock, a bench engraved with two hearts and some bad handwriting, a dogwood tree that’s blooming in splashes of bright pink, and a street light.

He counts his paces, one, two, three.

“Right here,” he says, pointing.

Haru stops next to him. “Where?”

“There. Right at that spot on the pavement.”

“There? I disappeared _there_? At such a place? In the middle of the park?”

“We were running up this path,” says Makoto, shielding his gaze from the sun as he looks down the road. “It was raining, and you stepped into a puddle next to me. And the next thing I knew, you were gone.”

Here in the daytime, with petals on the grass behind them and a soft breeze tickling their cheeks, Makoto can’t help but feel like the story loses all the terror in its telling.

He looks at Haru. Haru’s staring, brows furrowed, at that spot on the pavement with his hands in his pockets.

“You really don’t remember?” asks Makoto again, for the fifth time in two hours this morning.

Haru shakes his head. “I told you. I remember running. Then it’s like I fell asleep. And the next thing I remember is waking up next to you in my bed. You were taking up too much space, so I got up and went to sit in the tub for a while.”

He sounds irritated, but Makoto knows it’s not directed at him.

“But, Haru,” says Makoto, “that doesn’t explain the whole of Friday night and Saturday…”

“I know.” Haru frowns. “I just… can’t remember. There’s nothing there. It’s a blank.”

He tilts his head back and stares at the clear blue sky, without a raincloud in sight, as though it’ll hold the answer for him somehow.

Makoto lets out a small sigh of resignation. He turns, heading over to the bench with the poorly carved graffiti, and sits down.

Haru follows him, his piercing gaze never leaving Makoto. Knees bump, and Haru's arm brushes up against Makoto’s as he sits beside him, leaning close and reaching out. Moments later, Makoto feels the pressure of Haru’s hand on his in his lap. Their fingers intertwine.

Makoto brings Haru’s hand up to his lips and gives it the lightest and airiest of kisses, knowing for sure in that moment that he is never letting go again.

“I’m sorry,” says Haru.

“Why?” asks Makoto. “It’s not your fault.”

“What the water told you. It’s true. I was trying to save you. I didn’t know what to do.”

Makoto studies Haru’s pensive face for a while, memorising the curve of his cheek, the way the light falls on his profile and makes interesting shadows with his hair.

“Do you remember, Haru?” he asks. “The deal you made, I mean.”

“That’s the thing.”

Haru’s fingers tense round Makoto’s hand, reflexively.

“I don’t remember what happened to me. And I don't remember that either,” says Haru. “I’m almost sure that I used to know…”

His voice trails off quietly. Makoto looks down at their joined hands, at the whiteness of Haru’s knuckles and his long, thin fingers, notices the way they tremble slightly.

“I wish I could remember,” Haru whispers under his breath.

Makoto leans over and presses his cheek to Haru’s temple. Haru leans into him, inhaling deeply.

“You smell like my laundry room,” says Haru.

Makoto laughs, in spite of everything. “I might be wearing one of your t-shirts under this jacket.”

“Why would you wear my t-shirts? They’re too small for you.”

“Because I missed you,” says Makoto, simply.

Haru’s gaze flickers upwards. He doesn’t say anything, but Makoto feels his grip tighten fiercely.

“Hey, Haru,” Makoto says, thinking back to the morning. “Did the water talk to you today? When you were in the bath?”

Haru shakes his head.

“I wonder why it gave me back,” he says, suddenly. “What does it want? Why can’t I remember?”

Makoto can feel his body start to stiffen. Before Haru can notice it, Makoto gives his hand one last squeeze, and stands up.

“The important thing is, you’re back,” says Makoto. “And it’s not taking you away from me again.”

 

* * *

 

On Monday, Makoto goes in search of Uchida-san.

He listens to the radio in the morning as he’s drinking coffee, turns it off at exactly the same time last week (when the traffic announcements start), and leaves the apartment with his backpack on his shoulder and jacket on his arm. But there is no one in the corridor, and when Makoto asks the doorman if the mail has come for today, he finds out that it’s come early for a change.

Makoto wonders if Uchida-san is trying to avoid him. He stares into space, pondering all the possible reasons why as he makes his way to the station, and it’s then that the sound of a vaguely familiar female voice calling his name from the other side of the road saves Makoto from walking straight into a telephone booth.

“Tachibana-kun!”

Makoto blinks, pauses in his tracks, and turns to see a waving, red-headed figure dressed in black leggings, a zipped-up sports jacket that’s white with green stripes and pink New Balance shoes. She has big padded headphones on her head that she takes off and hangs round her neck. The wires trail down into a bulging gym bag.

It’s Uchida Mayuko.

Too surprised to say anything, Makoto raises his hand to wave back at her. She glances quickly at both sides of the street, then crosses the road.

“Long time no see,” says Mayuko, smiling as she runs up to him. “When are you coming down to the gym again?”

“Ah, Mayuko-san - I’m - uh… pretty busy with swim coaching these days.”

“That’s no excuse,” Mayuko scolds him with narrowed eyes. “You need to condition your muscles in other ways too. It’ll make you a better coach to come to more kinds of classes and see how other coaches teach!”

Makoto tries to return her smile, but the only thing running through his head right now is _are you a water spirit too?_ , which is making him think all kinds of bizarre and totally pointless thoughts about the reproductive habits of water spirits.

“I was hoping to see your dad this morning, actually,” is all he manages to say.

“Oh? Why? I think he left home earlier today. You probably missed him.”

The light turns green, and they cross the road together towards the station.

“Nothing much,” says Makoto. “I just wanted to ask him something… um, water-related.”

He tacks the last bit on self-consciously, shooting a quick glance at Mayuko to see if she reacts.

“ _Huh_?” asks Mayuko, staring at him. “Water? Dad?”

“Yeah, we were kind of talking about it the other day,” says Makoto.

“You were talking to my dad about swimming? Ahh, seriously, he’s the worst, he’s willing to listen to you go on about water and yet he falls asleep once I start telling him about today’s _killer_ aerobics class…”

Mayuko rolls her eyes, then flashes Makoto a sudden grin.

“My dad’s quite fond of you. We always hear about that nice, polite boy Tachibana-kun who plays with the stray cats in the neighbourhood.”

Makoto laughs. “Old habit.”

“So what kind of water question do you have for my dad? I don’t think he even swims,” says Mayuko, crinkling her brow in thought. “Well… we used to go to the pool when we were younger, but Kiyoshi and I both weren’t that keen on it, so we stopped in junior high.”

“It’s nothing. Don't worry about it,” says Makoto, with a smile.

They reach the station, and Mayuko raises her hand in farewell as she heads to the bus stop.

 

* * *

 

_Haruka floats on his back in Iwatobi High School’s pool. It’s a warm summer night, but the water is cold. It’s water without Rin in it, calm and still, caressing his bare skin. The evening wind strokes past his face._

_“What was it I really wanted?” he asks in his head, dipping down beneath the water’s surface. His body twists, ghosting through the deep end of the pool, arms reaching out to propel himself forward with the gentlest of strokes._ _“What was it I was trying to do?”_

_His mind flashes back to that moment where Rin had passed him by, so swiftly, like a flash of lightning. Was it at that moment when it had all gone wrong?_

_No, thinks Haruka, because in that moment I didn’t care if I won or lost; all I cared about was getting to swim with Rin again. I looked forward to it. And it was fun. So why does it matter so much that I lost?_

_The water is silent, but it’s the silence of someone who’s listening to you, breathing softly._

_Haruka closes his eyes, trying to lose himself. All he sees is Rin. Rin smiling as he holds up the medley relay trophy. Rin on his knees, crying. Rin promising to meet him in the tournament. Rin standing above him, saying he’ll never swim with him again, smirking._

_The moon is a blurry circle of white through the surface of the water. It’s a full moon tonight, bright and blinding, shimmering way up in the sky beyond all human reach._

_Is that where Rin is, now? Has he soared, away and above, where Haruka can’t go?_

_He was supposed to become free with this race. Both he and Rin. But somehow, he feels even more trapped than ever._

_“What was it all for?” he asks the water, reaching out plaintively, helplessly. “Is this what you wanted from me? Is this the debt I owe you?”_

**_no_ **

_The answer comes, quick and sudden._

**_not yet_ **

_Haruka thinks about his grandmother’s words again. The old, familiar chill comes back, a prickling sensation down his spine._

_”But that’s what you said.”_

_The water swirls gently round his fingertips, tickling his toes as he kicks back towards the end of the pool._

_“That's what you said. ‘Teach me about loss.’ Isn’t this losing? Isn’t it enough?”_

_But the water’s gone dead and silent now, leaving Haruka alone, calling out to an empty void._

 

* * *

 

The texts start coming in to Makoto’s phone at midday on Tuesday. He is sitting in the middle row of a lecture theatre, listening to grey-haired Kitamura-sensei give the world's dullest exposition of five basic principles of early childhood education, and he feels a buzzing in his pocket.

He sneaks his phone out one-handed and gives it a quick glance. _New Message. From: Haru._

He flips it open.

_makoto. call me._

Sachiko kicks him under the table. “Oi,” she hisses. “Kitamura’s looking over here.”

Makoto’s head snaps up and he does an excellent imitation of a model student for a few minutes, mindlessly copying down every single word on the whiteboard, during which time his phone buzzes three more times. When Kitamura-sensei looks away, he seizes his chance to glance down again.

 _call me now._  
_it’s really important.  
_ _i need to talk to you._

Makoto gets to his feet abruptly, ignoring Sachiko’s surprised yelp, and runs out of the lecture theatre, muttering something about needing the toilet to Kitamura-sensei along the way. He doesn’t even stop to look at the teacher.

He whips out his phone the minute he’s a safe distance away in the corridor and presses ‘1’, heart racing. Haru picks up immediately.

“Makoto.”

Haru’s voice could freeze water. Makoto feels a strange chill rush through his body.

“Haru? What is it? Is there an emergency?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you? Tell you what?” asks Makoto, mystified.

“That _you_ made a deal to get me back.”

Makoto inhales sharply. There’s an edge in Haru’s tone that cuts straight through him like a knife, cold and icy, and Makoto knows there is nothing he can say, nothing he can do right now to make any excuses for himself. He can only tell the truth.

He slumps against a wall, ignoring the curious looks from other students as they pass him by, and takes a deep breath to steady his nerves.

“For the same reason you didn’t tell me, Haru,” says Makoto. “Four years ago. When you did the same thing.”

Haru goes quiet.

Makoto counts the breaths he hears on the phone. They’re rough and staccato, but steady. _One. Two. Three._

Finally, Haru sighs, long and slow.

“I won’t ask you why you did it, then,” he says.

“Because I’ll give you the same answer,” Makoto finishes.

A few more beats of silence pass between them. Haru’s the one who breaks it.

“I just finished mid-morning training.”

“Ah,” says Makoto. “The water… it told you?”

“Not at first,” says Haru. “It wasn’t saying anything at first. Until I asked why it gave me back, and why I can’t remember what my promise was. Then it told me that my debt had been paid.”

There’s another pause, like Haru’s worried the next words are hard for Makoto to hear, though Makoto thinks they’re probably more painful for Haru to say.

“By you. Paid by you.”

“Yeah,” says Makoto.

He doesn’t need to say anything else. He knows Haru’s ready to kill him himself, at this point, ready to shake him hard and ask _why, why did you do it_ , a million times over until they both crumble, but he knows also that the answer is right there, clear as day, for both of them to see.

“Well,” says Haru. “What does the water want from you?”

“Love,” Makoto whispers.

There’s a long silence.

“What?” says Haru, a note of disbelief in his voice.

“ _‘Teach me about love’_ , it said.”

 

* * *

 

_**i know of so many who fear the water. so many… so many…**_  
_**but you -**_  
_**you are the first i have met who loves me despite your fear**_

_**so this is my deal for you** _

_**teach me about love, tachibana makoto  
** _ _**teach me about love** _

_**and i will return nanase haruka** _

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter ending that isn't a heart-wrenching cliffhanger! Rejoice!
> 
> And a little bit of the mystery is starting to unravel, I think.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I enjoyed writing this chapter ♥ and I really appreciate all your comments and kudos.


	6. love and loss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Makoto embarrasses himself in an arcade, and Haruka finds someone on his doorstep in the middle of the night.

_Haruka is in no hurry to go home._

_There's nothing look forward to now, after all, no prospect of redemption in the pool tomorrow; their tournament is over and so is their season of swimming._

_He thinks of the water, frustratingly curious and enigmatic like it always is._

**_no_ **

**_not yet_ **

_Haruka wonders what this means, if there's some greater loss in his life yet to come. He ponders it with a dispassionate detachment as he mounts the steps up to his house._

_A gleaming light catches the corner of his eye. For a second, he wonders if it’s just the bright moonlight or the glow of the street lamps, reflecting off his windows. But as he reaches the top of the stairs and glances to his left, he realises it’s coming from inside his house._

_Did I leave the light on by mistake? he wonders, pausing briefly as he stares at his front door._

_He steps forward and slides it open. The light inside spills out onto the dark front porch._

_In front of him is Makoto._

_Makoto is sitting on his doorstep, eyes closed. He’s still in his tracksuit, zipper half-open, and the sunshine yellow of the Iwatobi High School t-shirt peeks out behind the jacket. His sports bag is next to him._

_He’s been here all along. If he’s dressed like this, that means - he came straight here, he sat here, waiting - waiting -_

_"Makoto?”_

_Haruka says his best friend’s name with a strange, curious hesitation, as if barely daring to believe he’s right there like this, as if saying “Makoto” might make the vision before his eyes dissipate like a mirage._

_Makoto doesn’t stir. His head rests against the wooden frame round the archway of Haruka’s front corridor, dipping forward just ever so slightly as his shoulders rise and fall, up and down, with his gentle, even breathing, steady as a tidepool on a calm day. That’s when Haruka notices the phone clasped in his hands, green notification light blinking._

_Haruka eases it out carefully, trying not to wake Makoto, and listens to the message. As his friends’ words pour into his ear, his eyes widen, and he breathes in sharply, feeling more alive suddenly than he has in hours. He listens to the garbled mess right till the end, then looks down at the one person whose voice hadn’t been there._

_Makoto’s face is tranquil in sleep. Haruka can’t take his eyes off him. He can’t forget those words, ever, and they echo in his head again right now. Fresh and clear, ringing out like a bell, calling his name. Eight years ago - one month ago -_

_It’s no good if you’re not there, Haru.  
_ _I want to swim with you._

_And in that moment, Haruka is seized with a sudden foreboding that maybe, just maybe, he has some inkling of what the water means when it says, **not yet**. But the deal was to save Makoto’s life. So surely, surely, Makoto is safe - surely he won’t lose him - surely this can’t be what the water means when it says, teach me about loss…_

_Haruka stares at Makoto, barely daring to blink, memorising the face on his doorstep all over again._

_He bends down and reaches out. His hand lands on Makoto’s shoulder._

_He shakes, gently._

_”Makoto,” he says, with a voice filled with urgency. “Makoto.”_

 

* * *

 

Makoto takes one step up, one step right, one step up again and one step down, before attempting to execute a complicated maneouvre that involves flipping his body around and hitting the _down_ arrow twice while simultaneously stepping up in between beats.

He is a spectacular failure at it.

“You’re supposed to copy the hand movements too,” Haru remarks, observing him with a critical eye.

“What?!” Makoto exclaims, breathless.

“Nanase, you suck.”

A young, spiky-haired ginger, who swims butterfly, speaks in an outrageous regional dialect Makoto can’t place and reminds him of loud-mouthed Asahi Shiina from junior high, gives Haru a punch on the shoulder. “Don’t troll your poor boyfriend like that. Kuro-kun’s already kicking his ass.”

Haru gives the other boy a silent, poker-faced shrug that perfectly conveys  _well, he’s **my** boyfriend to troll_.

Makoto wants to shoot Haru a disapproving look, but that would mean taking his eyes off the screen even more and as Ginger has already pointed out, they’re barely thirty seconds into this and Makoto is trailing by an appalling number of points. 

Belatedly, it occurs to Makoto that there was no way this could have ended well for him. He should never have said yes. It’s kind of a _vaguely_ athletic endeavour, and he’s up against a bevy of uber-competitive university sportsmen, who are right this moment split down the middle in their very vocal support for their senpai vs. the clear, pitiful underdog.

The song continues to blare in their ears, above the rhythmic patter of footsteps and whoops of cheering. The info screen helpfully informs them that it is called “TRIP MACHINE survivor” by DE-SIRE and has a BPM of 42.5 ranging to 170, which, Haru’s vice-captain Kurosaki Kenji had assured him before pressing START, is totally slow and manageable.

Apparently, the unspoken caveat is that one must not have two left feet, because _manageable_ is decidedly not the term Makoto would apply to his current situation.

Dance Dance Revolution EXTREME (EXTREME, of course, in all caps) isn’t being good to him.

Haru tilts his head to one side, expression unchanging, as he watches Makoto continue to fumble his way through this seemingly neverending torture. “I wonder why you’re so good at singing, but you can’t manage dancing.”

Makoto opens his mouth to try and protest that singing has nothing to do with dancing, that having a good voice does not mean having control over one’s feet, especially not in such a brutal, unforgiving game of speed and hand-eye coordination, and anyway isn’t Haru the one who always points out that Makoto is terrible at tasks that require attention to small detail; but he is interrupted by Ginger, who appears to have overheard Haru at the most inopportune moment and perks up before Makoto can say anything.

“What’s this? Mister Hunka-Hunka-Muscles here can sing?”

“No, he can’t!” Makoto yells in desperation, stepping wildly around him as arrows fly up the screen. Techno beats pound on mercilessly.

Haru turns to Ginger with an adorable smirk that somehow makes Makoto want to smack him and kiss him at the same time. “Yes, he can.”

“It’s okay, Tachibana!” Kurosaki roars over the music, never missing a beat. “After I wipe the floor with you on this, we’ll go to karaoke and you can show us your true power!”

Makoto comes to a rapid decision that this is the last time he will ever consent to accompany Haru on a “team-bonding outing”.

 

* * *

 

_As Haruka lies in bed that night, thinking of the relay tomorrow, he wonders if this is the truth of what it all comes down to, for him. The meaning of swimming. The meaning of loss._

_Maybe he’s just there to make up the numbers tomorrow; maybe he won’t make much of a difference, in the end, but it’s enough for him that his friends want to do it - that Makoto wants to do it -_

_It’s meaningless without you_

_Haruka remembers a promise he made to himself, to Makoto, secretly, years ago._

_If you want to swim, then I’ll swim with you. Even if you’re scared of the water, I’ll protect you._

_He doesn’t intend to break that promise, not now or ever._

_He thinks again of Rin, surging ahead, leaving an angry trail of bubbles in his wake, and he takes a deep, deep breath. The air rushes into his lungs. It’s a buoyant, familiar sensation, like when he’s swimming, floating._

_He opens his eyes._

_The ceiling fan spins overhead. Moonlight shines through his open window and onto the crook of his arm. Haruka knows he should fall asleep already. It’s late. They have a race tomorrow._

_Tomorrow, they will take to the water once more, and he will swim with his friends. Makoto will lead the way, and Haruka will end it._

_It’s meaningless without you_

_Haruka exhales slowly, letting all the air out. He comes back down to earth, back to his warm bed with the breeze gently rustling his hair on the pillow._

_He still doesn’t understand, not completely. But maybe he’s starting to. Maybe, after he swims the relay again, he will see that sight from before, and he will know what winning and losing and swimming really mean to him, if anything._

 

* * *

 

One hour later, Makoto’s throat is dry and hoarse, and no fewer than four people clamour to tell him that it only makes his voice sound even sexier than it did before.

All helpless glares in Haru’s direction are met with merely the slightest of fond smiles and, eventually, a grudging acquiescence to perform a duet with him, which Ginger records on his phone with abnormal glee.

Makoto gives him his number and asks him to send him the video. He forwards it on to Nagisa, whom he figures will get a kick from it.

Nagisa sends him a reply exactly seventeen minutes later, after Makoto has declared himself done with singing for the next five years at least and foisted the microphone off to Haru’s team captain Miyata Shinya, a tall, lanky blond who hasn’t said more than ten words the entire day, has a lazy smile like a languid cat, and obligingly suffers being called “Miya-chan” by just about one and all except for Haru, who calls him “Miyata-buchou” like a normal person.

_From: Hazuki Nagisa_  
_THAT’S TOOOOO ADORABLE MAKO-CHAN OMGGGG I’M EMAILING IT TO RIN-CHAN AND REI-CHAN RIGHT NOW I’M SETTING THIS SCREENCAP AS MY LOCK SCREEN WALLPAPER （‐＾▽＾‐）  
_ _Attachment: KAWAIIIII.JPG_

Makoto smiles, and shows his phone to Haru, who raises an eyebrow at him. Miyata’s now being accompanied by three other very loud team members on some unrecognisable, raucous rock song, so Haru shifts closer and leans into Makoto to speak. His breath tickles Makoto warmly on the earlobe.

“I don’t know whether to be happy or terrified that we’re Nagisa’s wallpaper,” he says.

“I think it’s kinda sweet,” says Makoto. “But yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Your voice does sound sexier,” Haru remarks.

Makoto can feel the tips of his ears turning pink, but unexpected salvation shows up in that moment in the form of vice-captain Kurosaki, who comes over, plonks himself right next to Makoto’s other side on the couch, calls him “Tachibana-senpai” in an impossibly wheedly voice and begs him to recommend the best songs to woo girls with.

“I don’t know anything about wooing girls,” Makoto says, laughing, as Haru rolls his eyes at Kurosaki.

“Then, Nanase, _you_ help me! What song would you want Tachibana to sing to you? _Most_ of all? In the world?”

“The saba-counting song,” says Haru immediately, deadpan and serious.

Kurosaki stares. “What the _fuck_ is that?”

Makoto suddenly finds himself entirely preoccupied with ordering a hot honey lemon drink from the automated machine. He then stands up and beats a quick retreat to the toilets before Kurosaki can ask him to perform a verse from said song.

As he bends over the sink and splashes his face, droplets trickling down his cheeks, his fingers linger under the tap for a few moments.

 _You wanted me to teach you about love? This is love,_ thinks Makoto, trying his best to channel his feelings, all of them, into that stream of water that’s sliding down through the little cracks in between his knuckles. _Spending time with Haru like this. Getting to know the other people in his life who matter to him. Even when I suck at Dance Dance Revolution. Even when he talks about the saba-counting song. It’s so embarrassing. But it’s love._

The water stays silent, cool on his skin.

Makoto turns off the tap. He dries his hands on a paper towel, takes one last look at himself in the mirror, coughs self-consciously and runs a hand through his messy hair.

Just as he’s heading back down the corridor towards the karaoke room, his phone buzzes again.

_From: Hazuki Nagisa  
_ _so everything is okay now with Haru-chan? (ﾉﾟ▽ﾟ)ﾉ_

Makoto types out a quick reply.

_To: Hazuki Nagisa  
_ _Yeah. Everything is fine. We’ll Skype you and Rei tomorrow ^_^_

 

* * *

 

“I can’t tell you how good it feels to be speaking Japanese again!”

“Are you sure you shouldn’t be talking to us in English, Rei?” teases Makoto, smiling at his friend’s flushed, excitable face, 23,000 miles’ worth of ocean away from them. “The more practice, the better, right?”

“Even if he did, it’s not like you’d understand him,” says Haru, turning to shoot Makoto a look.

“No, I wouldn’t.” Makoto laughs. “You wouldn’t either, Haru.”

The corners of Haru’s lips quirk upwards ever so slightly, in that way that lets Makoto know he’s won this point, but Haru will be damned before he admits it out loud.

“My English is excellent now!” Rei pronounces grandly, pushing his glasses up his nose as his chest swells. “I’ve studied all the grammar in absolutely perfect detail!”

“Ahhhh, that’s amazing, Rei-chan.” Nagisa grins, eyes shining. “Have you learned the difference between _left_ and _right_ yet?”

Rei sputters and chokes on his water. “I made that mistake just _once_ when I first moved here!”

“Yeah, and you ended up bringing your clothes to a charity store instead of the laundromat, and then lost the whole lot of them because they thought you were making a donation…”

Makoto bursts out laughing. “That happened?”

“Yup,” Nagisa says gleefully, heedless of Rei’s furious blush, red as a tomato in the webcam window.

Haru cuts in then. “So when you sent Rei that package…”

“I bought up the whole of the nearest Uniqlo and threw it all in!”

“Well, not _literally_ the whole of Uniqlo,” Rei mutters, but he’s smiling, in spite of himself.

 _That’s love, too,_ thinks Makoto, looking at Nagisa’s warm answering chuckle.

 

* * *

 

That night, Makoto falls asleep with the radio still on, wakes up in a hazy daze with lyrics on his lips, and turns off his alarm at exactly 7:04:00.

Makoto wonders if Haru had purposely left the radio playing when he’d headed home. He texts him anyway, just in case.

_Good morning Haru! Four minutes exactly today. UVERworld on the radio._

Feeling somewhat mellow and lazy, Makoto opts for green tea this morning instead of coffee, leaves the radio blaring in the background from his bedroom and turns on his computer to the strains of old-school Arashi. A little 'ding' sound comes out of his speakers.

_New Mail  
_ _From: Matsuoka Rin_

Makoto clicks the notification in the corner of his desktop. The email’s sent to both him and Haru.

 

_Hey Haru, Makoto,_

_I know this is kinda sudden, but, wanna come visit?_

_My uni’s doing this big international swim friendly soon. Coach says I can invite some friends to come compete. Thought Haru might be keen. We haven’t had a race in a while. Come over and let me kick your ass already._

_You can stay with me. I’ll just throw my roommate out to his girlfriend’s house._

_It’d be good to see you both. Here’s the schedule. Take a look. Let me know._

_Rin_

 

Makoto downloads the attached PDF and opens it. He reaches into the backpack by his desk for the blue-grey clear file with starfish on it, takes out the printed piece of paper on top with a list of his university’s term dates and important occasions, and compares the two documents over sips of green tea.

He gets up and goes to the kitchen to fix some peanut butter toast, then sits down to type a reply to Rin, cc Haru, trying his best to keep the breadcrumbs off his keyboard and failing.

Haru delights in reminding Makoto that if he just got up earlier, he wouldn’t need to multitask in the mornings, and then he wouldn’t do things like drop toast butter side down on his keyboard.

(Buttered keyboard count thus far in one year and one month of Tokyo time: two and a half.

Half because that one time only the edge of the toast landed on the keyboard and the unfortunate spacebar bore the brunt of the buttering.)

Makoto always tells Haru with a smile and a nudge that telling Makoto to "just get up earlier" is like him telling Haru to "just give up saba".

The argument typically ends with one of them kissing the other into submission.

 

_Hey Rin,_

_Good to hear from you!_

_This sounds like fun! And actually - I think I could do it, if Haru can. It coincides with study week for me so I won’t be missing lectures. I just need to bring work over._

_I’d love to watch you two race again. We’ll talk about it and get back to you soon._

_Makoto_

 

He presses send, looks at the clock in the corner of his computer, and gets up because in exactly twenty minutes, the traffic report will come on. 

It takes him fifteen minutes to wash up his breakfast things, get ready, pull on his jacket and step out of his flat. He’s switched to the light blue denim now, a thinner layer for warmer days ahead. He locks his door and heads down to the front lobby of his building, where he sits down on a plastic chair by a potted plant, turns it to face the door, and takes out a book on injury prevention to bide his time.

Four minutes later, a familiar footstep sounds just ahead of him, and Makoto’s head snaps up.

“Uchida-san,” he calls out with a smile, getting to his feet.

“Tachibana-kun!”

His mailman smiles back, with a kind twinkle in his grey eyes. “I haven’t seen you in a while… ah, don’t tell me you were waiting for me!”

“I was,” says Makoto. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you. Actually, I bumped into Mayuko-san the other day, and I mentioned it to her…”

Uchida-san nods. He adjusts his blue peaked cap, rests his hands on the strap of his satchel, and looks at Makoto with a genial, patient curiosity.

“Um,” Makoto starts. “A week or so back, the water took Haru.”

Uchida-san’s eyebrows shoot up into his forehead, but he says nothing.

“I… I mean, Uchida-san, do you…”

Makoto stops, and stares into his mailman’s placid face, wondering how to continue without being rude. As though Uchida-san can read his mind - and, it occurs to Makoto in that moment, perhaps he can - he gives him a small, reassuring smile.

“I may be of the water, Tachibana-kun, but I am not the water itself. I do not know everything it does. I do not know why. I do not know its mind. And I do not know what it intended with Nanase-san. I am so very sorry.”

He says this simply, looking straight into Makoto’s searching gaze with a solemn seriousness.

Makoto believes him.

“Well… the water told me that Haru owed it a debt. That Haru made a deal.”

“Nanase-san? He did?” Uchida-san asks.

Makoto nods. “So I made one to get Haru back.”

“Ah,” says Uchida-san. “I see...”

His voice sounds dimmer and further away, suddenly, as if it’s weighted down by the crushing pressure of all the ocean’s waters, as if the seabed lay heavy atop his chest.

Makoto takes a deep breath, steeling his resolve. “I just want to know what it means, Uchida-san. I don’t want to know how to get out of it. I know I probably shouldn’t have done it. But I don’t regret it.”

Uchida-san gives him a tiny smile and a look that’s fathoms deep, that speaks of warmth and pity and courage and despair all at once, somehow.

“The water always wants to learn about humans,” he says. “That’s all. You know that, Tachibana-kun, don’t you? It always says so, right from the start. So it wants you to teach it something, doesn’t it?”

Makoto nods slowly. “Love,” he says.

Uchida-san’s eyes widen. “Love?”

“Love,” Makoto repeats.

“Oh,” murmurs Uchida-san. “Oh, Tachibana-kun.”

He says Makoto’s name almost sorrowfully, and reverently.

“What is it? What is it, Uchida-san?” Makoto asks, staring.

“In all my years - all my years, Tachibana-kun - I’ve known the water to ask for a lot of lessons from a lot of human beings… hundreds, thousands maybe…”

 _Just how old **are** you?_ Makoto wonders.

“But this is the first time I have heard of the water asking someone to teach it about love. You are the first one, Tachibana-kun. And love is the greatest of all human emotions. So I fear - ”

Uchida-san hitches his satchel further up on his shoulder. He glances down awkwardly at his feet, then up at Makoto again, earnest and open. _Please believe me,_ his eyes say. _I mean you no harm._

“I fear you may end up paying the biggest price of all.”

 

* * *

 

_“In the end, it wasn’t me trying to teach you about loss, was it?”_

_The water wraps teasingly around Haruka’s legs as he swims down the lane, slow and unhurried, relishing the now-familiar feel of the Iwatobi High School pool, the scent of the chlorine, the green of the trees all around reflecting in the blue._

_“Very funny. Did you finally grow a sense of humour?”_

_A confused bubbling sounds in Haruka’s ear as he reaches the wall, coils into his turn and kicks off._

_In the end… in the end._

_Haruka remembers the stricken look on Rin’s face as he stood on the sidelines, watching them in the relay. He remembers his world narrowing to nothing but tunnel vision of Rei stroking rapidly through the water towards him, waiting for that one microsecond, that one breath, when it’s his turn to spring to life. He remembers the joy coursing through his veins on the home leg, powering his team through to victory._

_In the end, he was the one who learned about loss after all, not the water._

_Haruka knows now, and he knows that whatever he lost is nothing compared to what Rin’s lost, in the silence of his solitude._

_Haruka’s always told himself, right from the start, that he doesn’t need a reason to swim. He still doesn’t like to think of swimming for anyone’s sake. But, with his friends… swimming together in the same lane, touching the wall, head whipping up to see Makoto’s hand outstretched to him…_

_Could it be?_

_The water tickles his toes with a gentle warmth._

_“Could it be?” Haruka thinks out loud, sending the thought out all around him. “That there’s a reason for me to swim, after all?”_

_The voices of the others, faint in the distance, grow louder as he draws close to their end of the pool. He speeds up for the last 20m and hoists himself up and out, shaking the water out of his eyes as he catches his breath._

_“Haru!” Makoto cries in surprise._

_Nagisa smiles. “You were already here, huh?”_

_Gou hands him a stack of towels, and Haruka picks up the light blue one on top. “How long have you been swimming?” she asks him._

_“Not very long,” says Haruka._

_Gou tells him that it’s a hot day and she brought ice out to keep their drinks cool, but Haruka’s distracted by something Rei is saying, about him being upset about losing at freestyle._

_It’s not that, Haruka wants to say. It’s not quite that - it’s not that simple -_

_But he just doesn’t know how to put in in words yet, and Makoto’s worried gaze is on him, so Haruka pretends he didn’t hear anything and continues drying his hair._

_“I’m happy to see you so motivated, Haruka-senpai!” says Gou, brightly._

_“I’m not,” says Haruka. “I was swimming because I didn’t know what else to do.”_

_She looks blankly at him, her face a picture of perfect incomprehension._

_Haruka turns to face the pool._

_“I figured I should ask the water about matters to do with water,” he says._

_Could it be?_

_The question echoes in his mind, as he gazes out at the blue expanse in front of him, surrounded by his friends._

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was actually meant to be the chapter where they visit Rin. But I wanted to take a bit more time drawing out the meaning of their respective promises, dwelling a little on quieter moments, letting them just have some fun together and introducing some of Haru's side of their social life in Tokyo, since pretty much all of it has been Makoto's thus far.
> 
> I enjoyed writing about Haru's teammates. I also always enjoy writing karaoke god Makoto. He seems to pop up in all my fics like a cameo, heh, even if I don't plan for him to ^^;;;
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, as always ♥
> 
> (The next update may come a little slower because I want to work on something for the [Official MakoHaru Festival](http://theofficialmakoharufestival.tumblr.com/), and I have... absolutely nothing so far oops)


	7. the aquarium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rin gives Makoto some advice, and Makoto tries to sing.

“And that’s what Uchida-san said,” Makoto finishes, leaning back on his cushion. He lies down all the way on his back and stares at the ceiling, hands behind his head. His hair is still damp from the quick shower, and he has yet to unpack all his swimming gear from his bag.

He had to talk to Haru, first. It couldn’t wait. He had to hear Haru’s voice. He had to tell him.

“Hmmm,” says Haru.

“Yeah,” says Makoto.

His phone is sitting on top of his living room table, flipped open, on speakerphone mode. Only the sound of the fan whirring fills the room now, punctuated by Haru’s quiet breathing on the other end of the line.

Makoto glances out of his window. It’s a still night tonight. His curtains hang heavy, unmoving. The sky is the colour of Midnight Blue, crayon no. 48 in Haru’s set of Crayolas, the one that’s third from the left in the back row of the box. Against all odds, Makoto sees a lone star, winking in the distance.

There are never any stars in sight here in Tokyo. The lights of the city are too bright. Maybe this one is a plane, thinks Makoto, and that reminds him of something else he has to talk to Haru about.

He breaks the silence first. “What do you think, Haru?”

“I think you’re an idiot,” comes Haru’s answer.

Makoto laughs, but feels a chill in the pit of his stomach.

Haru sighs. “There’s nothing we can do now, though. I don’t know what it means - ”

Haru pauses abruptly. Makoto can hear his voice catch in the back of his throat, the _but_ just hanging in the air between them. He waits.

“But - ”

_(there it is)_

“We might not find out for a long time, Makoto,” says Haru. “It took four years to catch up with me. And four years - what’s four years? It’s nothing to something that’s stayed the same for two billion years.”

“So you mean I could be waiting… for four years. Five years. Ten years.”

Makoto finds it harder and harder to speak. He goes quiet. As he stares at the ceiling, he sees a sword above his head, suspended by a shimmering, watery strand like a stalactite, ready to fall when he least expects it.

“Yeah,” says Haru.

Just the sound of his voice makes Makoto feel better, even though his words are stark, and offer no comfort. Just the sound of Haru, being there for him.

“Maybe even twenty years. Thirty years. We don’t know, Makoto.”

 _We._ There it is again. _We._

It’s the sound of Haru being there for him for the next thirty years, forty years, fifty years, as long as it takes, and beyond.

“Haru…”

“It’s okay,” says Haru. “It’s enough. Don’t talk about it any more. About Rin’s email…”

Makoto smiles. “Yeah. What do you think?”

“I read it over lunch, and I saw your reply. I asked my coach about it. He says it’s okay as long as I ‘don’t slack off and make sure I beat Matsuoka’s ass’.”

Makoto sits up. 

“I guess we’re going to Australia.”

 

* * *

 

_”I was happy.”_

_It really was that simple after all, wasn’t it?_

_Haruka dips his plastic orange net into the pool of water at his feet. His fingers break the surface. It’s pleasant and cool on this balmy summer night. Around him, the sounds of chatter and footsteps fade away. Makoto’s voice, saying something to Rei. Nagisa’s excited gasp as he watches Haruka, squatting down next to him. It all melts into the wind. It brushes past him and makes ripples in the water._

_Come, Haruka thinks, in his most coaxing tone. Come. Don’t resist._

_The goldfish float towards him. He feels them touch his knuckles lightly, like little kisses._

_Haruka gently scoops up four of the fish, sending soothing thoughts towards the water, and places them into a bag. He holds them out to Makoto. “For you.”_

_Makoto looks astonished. His eyes go wide, and he stares at Haruka._

_Haruka smiles._

_Four fish for four friends. Four fish for what they have, between the four of them._

_Four fish for Makoto, to know that he’ll never have to face the water alone again._

 

* * *

 

“It looks the same,” Haru remarks.

“Really? I’m surprised you even remember anything of the airport from your last trip,” says Rin, walking next to them through Sydney’s Kingsford Smith. “You were so out of it.”

Haru doesn’t say anything, just continues looking around him. They pass by a coffee shop, a juice bar and a convenience store on their way to the carpark. Makoto makes a brief stop to buy a bottle of water and a bar of interesting-looking Cadbury Caramello chocolate that they don’t have in Japan.

The air here in Australia is dry, drier than in Tokyo, even though Sydney’s a coastal city. They’re right on the verge of winter. Makoto feels the cold as soon as he steps out of the airport. The carpark is huge and sprawling and the first thing that strikes him, really strikes him, about this country, is that there seems to be so much _space_ everywhere, not just on land but in the skies as well. They stretch out for miles and miles, an uninterrupted expanse of light blue and white cirrus clouds. Makoto feels like if he dived into the sky, if he launched himself into the air with his arms outstretched, he could fly forever and he’d never touch a wall.

_So this is what the other side of the world looks like._

Makoto wonders if this is the sight that Haru saw too, when he came here the first time.

Rin’s car is a second-hand Australian make with a roaring lion as its logo. It’s unexpectedly functional and understated, for Rin; a four-door sedan in grey, but as they draw closer Makoto notices the shark car decal on the window pane with its sharp teeth showing, and he smiles.

Rin follows his gaze. He scowls. “Nagisa gave me that before I left.”

 _Sentimental as always, huh?_ thinks Makoto. He takes out his phone and snaps a picture of it.

“Oi.” Rin punches him on the shoulder with one hand, as he takes out his keys with the other and unlocks the car doors with a _click click_ sound. “What’s that for?”

“For Nagisa, of course,” says Makoto, with an innocent, beatific grin.

“Don’t you dare! He’ll send me like a thousand more in the post and tell me to sticker my whole car with them.”

Haru taps on the boot of the car. “Stop whining and open this for us already, Rin.”

Makoto tucks his phone back into his pocket and brings their luggage round, still smiling.

“You guys travel light,” Rin remarks. “Only one suitcase?”

“We don’t all use a whole drugstore worth of beauty and grooming products,” says Haru, deadpan.

“Oh, shut the fuck up.”

“Also, we share - ”

Rin claps his hands over his ears. “I don’t want to know what you share, thanks.”

“Textbooks,” Haru finishes, with the slightest hint of amusement dancing in his eyes.

Makoto laughs. He nods towards the front of the car, looking at Haru. “Hey, you should sit in front with Rin?”

Haru raises an eyebrow at him.

“Otherwise, it’s kind of awkward, isn’t it?” Makoto points out. “It’d be like Rin is our taxi driver…”

“I don’t care about that. But I’m not having you guys making out in my back seat,” says Rin firmly, crossing his arms. “One of you sit in front, I don’t care who it is. You can go wild in my roommate’s bed when we get home as long as you keep the door shut and hang a sock outside.”

Makoto feels a furious blush starting up in his neck. “ _Rin!_ ”

Haru shrugs, unperturbed. “Good to know.”

He reaches out for Makoto then, and tugs him towards the front, opening the door for him.

“You sit in front,” says Haru. “There’s more to see from the front seat. And you haven’t seen it before.”

His other hand drifts up to Makoto’s neck, touching him where the blush has turned him red. Haru’s fingers are cool and tender against the rush of blood. He gazes up into Makoto’s eyes for a breathless second, then leans in unexpectedly and brushes his lips past Makoto’s cheek before opening the back door and getting in.

Makoto touches his cheek in wonderment, and can’t keep the smile off his face as he gets in front next to Rin, who’s turned the music to some pop-rock station and is singing along softly in English as he taps his fingers on the wheel of the car.

“Got all your limbs in? Seatbelts on? Right. Let’s go.”

Rin hits the accelerator. Makoto hangs on for dear life.

 

* * *

 

The next day, after Haru joins Rin for morning training and to check out his university pool, Rin brings both of them to the Sydney Aquarium at Darling Harbour, where the water is impossibly turquoise and the boardwalk stretches out endlessly in paved red with flags and ferries neatly lined up by the pier. The wind blows at their faces. Makoto has to blink furiously to keep his eyes from drying out.

Rin stops outside the aquarium, and turns to them with a grin.

“Home to Australia’s largest collection of sharks,” he says.

There is an aquarium in Osaka. It’s not too far from Iwatobi. Makoto remembers visiting it as a kid, with a pair of very, very young twins in tow. Haru hadn’t come with him, then, even though Makoto had invited him.

“It seems strange to see the water cooped up behind glass tanks,” eight-year-old Haru had said solemnly, and Haru’s parents had ruffled his hair and apologised profusely to Makoto’s mom and dad for their son’s rude rejection of their kind offer.

Makoto had thought about it and figured that Haru meant the fish. Now, he’s not so sure.

 _Can these tanks really hold water?_ he wonders. _If it wanted to, wouldn’t just… bust out?_

It occurs to Makoto that perhaps it simply doesn’t want to. Perhaps the water is contented to be held right here, because, then -

“Ah, it’s so crowded.” Rin frowns. “I don’t know how it is that Australia gets so many visitors even in freaking winter.”

“Your freaking winter isn’t anywhere as bad as Iwatobi’s. Stop complaining,” says Haru.

It’s so crowded. There are so many people. A gaggle of schoolchildren run past Makoto’s legs, waist high and laughing, pointing at the platypus in the first tank they see. It’s certainly a very strange animal, duck-billed and furry with tiny claws on its webbed feet, gliding with its head just above the water so it can breathe.

Where better for the water to watch people? All kinds of people?

“Makoto.”

Makoto starts, and shuts his mouth. He hadn’t realised he’s been gaping.

Haru’s staring at him. _Something on your mind?_

Makoto smiles and shakes his head. _It’s nothing._

Just that sword, that sword hanging over his head all the time, the tip of it sharp and shining.

_the biggest price of all_

“Man, I love the platypus,” Rin remarks, propped up on his arms at the ledge by the enclosure, staring at the odd little creature with a smile on his face. “Did you know the males have venomous spurs on their hind feet? They’re awesome. And so weird.”

“I didn’t know you were so into cute animals, Rin,” Makoto teases.

“It’s not a cute animal. Didn’t you just hear me? It’s a vicious beast that’ll poison you if it kicks you.”

Makoto watches the platypus chase its tail in circles for a while, and can’t help laughing.

 

* * *

 

Later, when they’ve passed by long-necked turtles, jellyfish with the texture of tissue paper and orange seahorses that look like a tangle of seaweed leaves, when they’ve stopped at the fairy penguins for far too long while Haru got bored from the lack of water and Makoto took a ton of photos for Nagisa and the twins because the penguins are just so _cute_ , when he’s found out what starfish feel like at the touch pool (surprisingly hard and knobbly), later, after all that -

Makoto finds himself breathless, at the start point of a tunnel.

Above him is a vision of water. Water, water everywhere, behind curved glass that arches high above their heads and down to their sides. Blue all around as far as the eye can see. And in the blue, thousands and thousands of tiny iridescent dancing fish, grey and silver and orange and yellow and pink, reef sharks with sharp teeth whipping past them like pointed arrows, huge manta rays that glide overhead, slowly, showing their white bellies and long tails.

“It’s really something, huh?” says Rin, his voice hushed, as he takes a step forward.

Haru doesn’t say anything, but his gaze lingers on the water with an almost palpable yearning.

Makoto reaches out and touches a hand, lightly, to the glass.

“It’s like being in the ocean,” he says.

He watches a brightly coloured, cobalt blue fish dart behind a rock formation that looks like a puffin. The curved surface of the glass warps everything, he knows; it makes things look smaller at some angles and bigger than others, the end result being a general dizziness that creeps up on Makoto as he walks through the underwater tunnel, a feeling of disorientation, like the ground beneath his feet isn’t quite solid.

It’s surreal. It’s strange. It’s beautiful.

He tries saying it out loud. “It’s beautiful.”

Haru turns to him. A tiny smile comes to his lips.

“The water,” says Makoto, looking up at a school of fish. “It’s alive. It’s so alive.”

“What’s with that weird comment? You sound like Haru,” Rin remarks. He shoots an amused grin in their direction. “He’s rubbing off on you even more now that you’re dating.”

Haru rolls his eyes at Rin. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s totally a bad thing. Have you met _you_ , Haru?”

“Yes,” is all Haru says, maddeningly unflappable.

Makoto barely notices Rin let out a helpless, undignified snort of laughter, and Haru’s “what?”. He can’t take his eyes off the sight in front of him. He knows it’s just a glass tank, of course, and this is water that’s been de-fanged, almost - this is water without tides, water without the brutal pull of currents and waves that drown - but here, under it like this, some part of him feels like he finally understands it just a little bit better.

It’s vast. It’s beyond human comprehension to understand just _how_ vast. It holds so much in its embrace, life and breath, light and dark, rays of sunshine and fallen stardust from the skies. It takes it all. The water takes everything.

And then there’s the monster lurking below, the final death for so many. Makoto doesn’t miss the odd bits of debris floating by, the scraps of prawn shell and torn flesh from today’s feeding, descending onto the brown grainy seabed; he thinks of bodies disintegrating, he thinks of coral growing round shipwrecks and fish nibbling at moss.

All this for two billion years, all of this, onwards in the inexorable march of time and space.

_How can something like this even begin to understand something as small as us humans? How?_

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t have the answer.

“Rin,” asks Makoto, that evening, rapping on Rin’s door. He’s just handed the bath over to Haru, which means they’ll have at least forty-five minutes of uninterrupted time. Makoto’s towel is still round his shoulders, droplets of shower water dripping off his hair.

Rin’s staring straight ahead at his computer with an impressive razor focus, typing up an essay. “Yeah?” he asks, without turning around.

Makoto goes over to sit on Rin’s bed. He fidgets with the corner of his bedspread. “What would you do if someone asked you to teach them about love?”

The clicking from the keyboard stops. Rin whirls around in his chair to look at Makoto, his face a vision of perfect perplexity, eyes narrowed, mouth open. “ _Huh_?”

“Ah… well, it’s just that someone asked me…”

“Is this some kind of _euphemism_?” Rin asks, crossing his arms and wheeling his chair over. He puts his feet up on his bed and leans closer to glare at Makoto. “Are they, like, actually hitting on you? Are they asking you to teach them about sex? I can understand that, but damn, seriously, just tell them to Google it, there are pictures and all and I’m sure you can’t draw them without turning into a tomato, no matter how experienced you _actually_ are - ”

“I am _so_ certain that they are not talking about sex,” says Makoto, cutting Rin off before this goes any further into morbid embarrassment.

Rin stares. “Then it’s a damn weird question.”

“It’s… well, just imagine it’s someone who’s never been in love before and doesn’t understand it.”

Rin’s confused expression clears slightly. “Oh, I get it. Are you writing one of those Agony Aunt columns for your uni paper or something? You’d be good at that kind of shit.”

Makoto decides that this is as good an explanation as he’s going to get without actually having to tell Rin the strange truth of things. “Yeah. It’s something like that.”

“Well, love…”

Rin’s voice trails off thoughtfully, almost impatient, as he cocks his head to one side and furrows his brow.

“I dunno, I always thought that, well… hell, you don’t have to have been _in_ love like that, like in a romantic way, to know what it is, right? I love my sister and my mom. Just like you love Ran, Ren and your parents,” says Rin, matter-of-factly, even though Makoto knows that he’d rather the earth swallow him up before he admits to Gou’s face that he loves her.

Makoto nods. “Yeah. I get what you mean.”

“Haru loves swimming, and his friends. Nagisa loves freaking Iwatobi cream bread. Rei loves beautiful things. Momo loves beetles, for fuck’s sake. Did I ever tell you he once tried to get me and Sousuke to give Gou a beetle as a confession of his love?”

Makoto bursts out laughing. “ _Really?_ To Gou-chan?”

“Yeah. It was called Pyunsuke. God, I can’t believe I remember that.”

“Pyunsuke…” Makoto repeats under his breath, chuckling.

“Anyway. What I mean is, well, all of that is love too, right? And it’s all different kinds of love,” Rin continues. He taps his fingers on his arm with a rather un-Rin-like pensive frown.

“So it can’t be explained after all?” Makoto asks. “It’s just a feeling? And the feeling is different for everyone, for everything that they love…”

Rin doesn’t respond right away. He just stares into space for a while, his lips pursed in thought. Makoto can almost hear the cogs turning in his head.

“It’s like… dude, just open your eyes,” says Rin, finally. “That’s what you should tell your weird question asker. Open your eyes. And you’ll see that love is _everywhere_.”

Makoto can’t help but smile at Rin. “Still such a romantic.”

Rin flips him off, but he’s grinning too. “That’s why you came to ask my advice, right?”

He tips his chair back with a sigh. When he speaks again, his voice is wistful, and strangely gentle.

“When I think about that time in elementary school, looking up at the sakura tree and imagining all the petals, falling into the pool, I think I was in love at that moment.”

“What, with petals?” Makoto asks, getting to his feet.

“Mmm. No,” Rin says, with a small shake of his head. “With life.”

 

* * *

 

_Haruka watches Rin fly towards him._

_There, he thinks. Right there! A sight I never thought I’d see again…_

_He feels his heart soar as he stands on the starting block, poised and taut in his crouch. Around him, he hears Gou’s voice, high and proud, cheering for her brother; he hears an impassioned yell of “Matsuoka-senpai!” from the Samezuka side, and he thinks - we’re not enemies after all, Rin, we’re friends, friends -_

_Rin draws closer, and Haruka slides his goggles down over his eyes, gaze fixed forward._

_”Haru!” Rin shouts at the top of his lungs, as his hand touches the wall, turning his face upward._

_Haruka’s already above him, arching into the water. He can’t wait. He can’t wait._

_It’s fun after all._

_Swimming is fun, after all._

_As he surges through with a blinding speed, as his arms stroke overhead, the water seems to go dark all around him for a few breaths - but it’s not the dark of the deep unknown in the ocean, it’s not the dark of interminable midnight blue._ _It's the dark just before dawn, as the sun comes over the horizon in a blinding flash of dazzling yellow._

_Haruka is floating on his back, submerged. His eyes are closed._

_He hears the voices of his friends._

_The water carries them to him, loud and clear and true, and it’s Makoto’s voice - Makoto first, shouting his name, shouting with all his heart -_

_“Haru!”_

_Haruka’s eyes open, slowly._

_”Haru-chan!”_  
_”Haruka-senpai!”  
_ _”Haru!”_

_And the thought comes into Haruka's head unbidden, bubbling up from within him like a geyser that can't be contained any longer._

_I love them._

_I love my friends._

_The water speaks to Haruka, suddenly._

**_love?_ **

_Haruka doesn't miss a beat. The swim is everything. The water's curious rippling trickles past his ear, but he swims on, faster and faster, guided by the voices of his friends calling him - up and out of the dark, to the bright surface..._

**_love  
_ ** **_love..._ **

_Haruka reaches out, stretches forward, riding on a rising swell that seems to propel his entire being onward and upward, to where Makoto's hand will be waiting for him._

 

* * *

 

“Did you enjoy the aquarium?” asks Makoto.

Haru is drowsily nestled in the crook of his arm, his head on Makoto’s shoulder, as they squeeze onto Rin’s roommate’s super single bed.

Rin had offered to roll out a sleeping bag for one of them. Makoto had been on the verge of, regretfully, accepting; Haru had brushed him off and told Rin in no uncertain terms that they would both fit fine, thank you very much. And they do somehow.

Makoto feels a slight movement from Haru as he nods. “It was fun.”

“You didn’t want to go when you were younger,” says Makoto. “Remember?”

“Mmm. I had weird ideas of the water.”

Hearing Haru say that makes Makoto laugh. “As if you still don’t.”

He presses a kiss to Haru’s forehead, running his fingers lightly through the fine, dark hair.

Haru’s eyes open, just the slightest of peeps, the barest flash of blue in the dark. “Well, at least you know now that the water is alive. I wasn’t making that up.”

“Yeah…”

They lie quietly, breathing together. Haru’s hand slides round to Makoto’s back, resting gently in the dip of his spine, just above his hip.

“I really felt that today, too,” Makoto says. “At the aquarium.”

“I know,” says Haru.

His arm round Makoto tightens. _I got you._

“I wasn’t scared,” Makoto says. “It was more like… wonder? Like, I wish I could understand it too. I can see why it wants to understand us.”

Haru doesn’t say anything for a while. But after a few still moments, he presses himself closer to Makoto, the warmth of his smaller body spreading across Makoto’s chest like a blooming, crackling flame.

“You’re unbelievable,” murmurs Haru.

“Huh?”

Haru shakes his head slightly. He rolls over so his back faces Makoto, and he becomes the little spoon. “I can’t sleep,” he says, soft as a whisper, his breath tickling Makoto’s arm.

Makoto knows what this is the cue for, and as he hugs Haru close to him, he opens his mouth to start the saba-counting song, except -

Nothing comes out.

He closes his mouth, stunned.

Haru stirs, and turns his head, eyelids flitting open slowly. “What’s wrong? You stopped.”

“I - what?”

“You were singing, then you stopped.”

“No, I wasn’t,” says Makoto, confused. “Singing.”

“Yes, you were.”

Haru’s eyes are wide open now, and he’s staring at Makoto with a growing urgency in his gaze.

“Try it again,” Haru says.

Makoto opens his mouth. Again, nothing comes out.

“There. You’re singing.”

Makoto swallows. “You can hear me singing?”

“Yeah.”

“I - I can’t. Haru, I can’t. When I open my mouth, I only hear silence. There’s nothing in my mind, Haru, I don’t even remember the words to the song - ”

“The _words_? Makoto, the words are literally one saba, two - ”

But as Haru speaks, there’s suddenly a muffled noise in Makoto’s ears, the reverberating sound of deafening silence that wraps around him like a heavy cloak.

“I can’t hear what you’re saying, Haru,” Makoto whispers, in horror.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a former Sydneysider, I've been looking forward to this chapter so much you have no idea. I love the city. I love writing them in the city. (And I've spent an embarrassing amount of time in the aquarium myself.)
> 
> Yes, Rin drives a Holden, like everyone else. He can't afford some fancy foreign car.
> 
> (small voice) please don't kill me things might get worse


	8. house of cards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Makoto finds something unexpected in his bag.

The next morning, when Rin and Haru leave for the day, Makoto takes an extra long shower.

He’s never been one to soak in the tub like Haru. The feeling of all his appendages turning wrinkly and pruney is not a pleasant one, and neither is the idle sensation of sitting in water, staring into space, with nothing to do.

Makoto is a calm soul, but there’s a part of him too restless to be cooped up like that, too used to movement.

So he turns on the tap (mentally apologising to Rin for jacking up his utilities bill) and stands under the hot, steamy blast of water. He can feel rivulets rolling down his neck, scorching the thin, bare skin, marking him in trails of red as the blood rushes through his veins.

He’s thankful for the heat, and the burning sensation. Anything right now to distract him. The more bodily, the more visceral, the better. The less he thinks, the better. He keeps his eyes open.

And out loud, he says, in a quiet, even voice, “What are you doing?”

To his surprise, the answer comes to his ears almost immediately.

**_you are teaching me about love_ **

**_as agreed_ **

**_?_ **

Makoto doesn’t even know how the water can convey punctuation through nothing but rhythm and cadence, but it does. There is a polite, confused incomprehension floating in the air between them, in the spaces between water droplets where Makoto draws breath.

Makoto doesn’t know either how the water can be uncertain about anything, so he decides to get to the point.

“Why can’t I remember the saba-counting song? Why can’t I hear it when Haru says it to me?”

**_i am learning about it_ **

“What does that mean?” asks Makoto.

The steam is going to his head now. He feels a little dizzy. Reaching behind him, he turns down the heat on the tap, and a sudden blast of lukewarm water hits his shoulders like a splash of cool air.

There are no more answers forthcoming. The water continues to flow down around Makoto.

_Okay, then._

He takes his time to shampoo and rinse off his hair. Idly, he starts to wonder about the saba-counting song again, trying to reach for it in his mind, but just like the whole of last night, it remains a fuzzy blank. It’s like whatever used to be there has been removed and replaced by white noise. Like a scratched up vinyl disc.

Makoto considers his next words carefully as he reaches for the soap.

“You know… I’m on your side.”

**_?_ **

Again that question mark, that distanced puzzlement.

“I don’t want to escape my debt. I just want to understand it. So will you tell me why I can’t remember the saba-counting song?”

**_because i am learning about it_ **

**_you told me that it is love, tachibana makoto_ **

“I did. It is,” says Makoto.

**_so you are teaching me about it_ **

**_i am learning about it_ **

It is the third time - or fourth, perhaps - that the water has said that, in the space of this shower, and it doesn’t sound irritated or anything, but Makoto gets the distinct sense that that is all it has to say. It isn’t being belligerent or difficult or any of the things that humans can be, because it _isn’t_ human, as Haru has reminded him so many times -

It just has nothing more to say by way of explanation. That statement seems to be entirely sufficient, where the water is concerned. Makoto's inability to comprehend is another problem altogether.

Makoto turns off the tap after twenty-three minutes, none the wiser.

 

* * *

 

At 12.00 exactly, Makoto eats the leftover Japanese curry in the fridge for lunch (extra spicy, the way Rin likes it), washes up the bowls by instinct before he remembers there is a dishwasher that Rin has taught them how to use (but it feels so unnatural to Makoto to load breakable things like _dishes_ into a machine and still trust they will be thoroughly scrubbed _clean_ ), picks up his backpack and goes to take the train to Rin’s university, where he will study for two hours before going to watch Rin and Haru race in the late afternoon.

The boxy yellow trains of Sydney are fascinating. They have reversible seats and multiple levels. This isn’t the first train Makoto has been on, but it is the first one he has ridden by himself. The sensation of wonder, of being a stranger in a strange land, washes anew over him as he sits by the window and stares out at the cityscape; everything is in a foreign language, everything seems bigger and brighter, and even in winter, like this, the pavements seem to shine in the light of the sun.

He unwinds his headphones and plugs them in as the train rumbles serenely on its journey.

The view from the train at Milsons Point station is stunning. He can see the Sydney Harbour Bridge, outlined against a cloudy sky, and below, the waters of Port Jackson shift and shimmer. Ferries of all shapes and sizes dot the sapphire blue expanse, leaving foamy white trails in their wake.

Water, water everywhere, and with it, the undeniable explosion into life of humanity, of things beyond the imagination of humanity.

Somewhere between stations, in the middle of the chorus of another rock song, it dawns on Makoto that he is in uncharted territory in all senses of the word.

But he can’t stop reaching. He can’t stop trying. Even though he knows he’ll find nothing but white noise, even though he looks at all the English signs and doesn’t understand them, he can’t give up. Because it’s love. He’s here for love. He lives for love.

(He thinks of Rin's words, last night.)

Well, how could he not? It's everywhere.

 

* * *

 

_Haruka sits in his tub that night, and sends a silent thought out into the water._

_“Do you have a problem with Rin?”_

_It’s a blunt question, the kind that doesn’t usually get a straight answer, but sometimes the water surprises Haruka, and perhaps this will turn out to be one of those times. He hopes. He’s buoyant, still floating on the wings of that victory and the sight he saw, the knowledge that sits secure within him now that he swims for_

_for_

_how does he put it into words?_

_for love?_

_\- love of the water, love of his friends -_

_He mulls over it quietly, as the excitement of the day settles in his bones._

_Makoto swims for Haruka (it’s meaningless, it’s meaningless without you). Rin swims to win, to be the fastest. Neither of them swim for love of the water. But the water doesn’t heat up so angrily when Makoto swims._

**_fire._ **

_The water’s sudden, restless bubbling startles Haruka._

**_that one… that one burns._ **

_Haruka finds that he understands this entirely, and wonders if that ought to disturb him, that he and the water are on the same wavelength. His grandmother would have had something to say about that. But his grandmother never liked the water all that much; she had been mildly disapproving, all along, of Haruka's obsession with swimming._

_“Yeah,” he says, out loud. “That one does.”_

_It sounds so outrageous that he almost laughs. But it’s also true, outrageously true._

_The water seems to grow warmer around him for a split second before it cools again._

 

* * *

 

Makoto gets round the sprawling campus with his faltering attempts at English, signs in at the library as a visitor, sits down at a sturdy-looking wooden desk near the window, then takes out his _Introduction to Kinesiology_ textbook.

A piece of paper falls out of it.

Makoto bends down, curious, and picks it up. It’s a note from Haru, scribbled on one of the big lined yellow post-its that Rin keeps around his apartment.

 

_Makoto,_

_What if I write down the song? Can you see it?_

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Haru_

 

Makoto closes his eyes, and opens them again, though he knows very well what he will see, and trying to hide from it will only prolong the sheer helpless frustration that's been simmering in him since last night.

Nothing.

There is nothing in that space before Haru’s name, just the blank post-it paper, staring back up at him. Makoto thinks that if he squints, he can make out a few faint flashes of grey pencil, like shorthand scratchings behind the veil that’s clouding his vision. But it never resolves itself into words.

Makoto’s shoulders sink as he lets out a small sigh. It is a sigh that lasts no more than a fraction of a second, a sigh inaudible to his neighbours at the next desk, a sigh that sounds like little more than leaves rustling in the wind outside.

He tucks the note into the front pocket of his bag, and it’s then that his fingers brush another unfamiliar piece of paper, this one small and rectangular and stiff to the touch.

He fishes it out, puzzled. It's a blank white piece of card with some hurried-looking, spindly writing in blue ballpoint on it. Makoto has never seen this hand in his life.

 

_tachibana-kun_

 

That's all it says. The tail of the _n_ sweeps upward in a rather sudden, dramatic fashion, as if the writer got interrupted unexpectedly and let his pen skid.

Makoto can feel some embossed letters on the other side of the card beneath his fingertips. He flips it over.

His mouth falls open, and he can't help letting out a gasp that makes the people round him turn to stare.

 

 **Bank of Japan** **  
**

**Uchida Kiyoshi**  
**Assistant Manager**  
**Department of Consumer Banking Operations**

 

* * *

 

**_that one burns._ **

_Rin is flame and light. He leaves scorching footprints where he walks, and he is blinding, and dazzling._

_The water knows that Rin is a shade of burning crimson it cannot extinguish, even though it’s tried. Rin is a contradiction in terms. He is fire that puts out water, that sizzles it into airy nothingness._

_Makoto is the green earth, slowly unfurling awake from its slumber where the water touches it. He is the promise of new life in spring, the first bud breaking through winter’s chill._

_It is Makoto’s idea to fill the pool with sakura blossoms to surprise Rin in the new year. It is Makoto who sees the first petal fall, when they are sweaty and covered with grime from the cleaning, when Haruka isn't thinking of anything but how to make enough Iwatobi-chans to attract new members. It is Makoto who remembers._

_Only Makoto._

_Only Makoto, thinks Haruka to himself, as he tells them his plan in breathless, excited tones, over a conspiratorial huddle in the club room. Only Makoto would look up at the sky with such gentle dreams, even as his feet stay firmly rooted._

_If Rin sets the ground on fire, it’s Makoto who heals._

 

* * *

 

"Dammit, Haru, have I ever told you you're a freaking monster?"

Haru side-eyes Rin from the passenger seat. "Not in those words."

They've been taking turns keeping Rin company up in front while he's driving, and this time, it’s Haru’s turn.

"I swear, you get faster every time I swim with you."

"What are you complaining about? You won," Haru reminds him.

"Yeah, but you beat Kieran Glazer into second place, and he's like, a _beast_ , on a good day he could wipe the floor with us."

"So I beat someone who's having a bad day?"

Makoto can hear the arch in Haru's eyebrow, the way his lip quirks ever so slightly.

"No, he was having a good day. I can tell from his timing. I was just having a better one. I’m totally on form, Haru, I'm on a roll. And you - I know _you_ weren't having a good day. And you still beat him. That's why you’re a monster.“

There's the smallest of pregnant pauses before Haru answers, his voice guarded. "What makes you think I wasn’t?”

"Dude," is all Rin says. Makoto sees him take his eyes off the windscreen for a second to shoot Haru a pointed glance. "I just know. If it's you, I can tell these things. Don't underestimate me."

From the seat behind Haru, Makoto sees him turn to face the road, catches a glint of blue. Haru in side profile looks like a statue someone made out of paper and alabaster, pale with fine curves, strangely fragile.

Makoto hears Haru take a breath then, but Rin cuts him off unexpectedly as he returns his gaze to the road in front of them. His tone's businesslike, but Makoto hears the concern lurking not very deep down below. Rin can't keep his feelings to himself after all.

"A bad day's a bad day. We all get them. Just get over it next time so I can beat you properly.“

Somehow, Haru sounds a million miles away when he speaks.

“It's always so simple for you, Rin.”

"What?"

"Swimming."

"How complicated can it be? You're the one who's always like, just _feel_ the water, don't think about it... so don't."

In spite of everything, the irony of Rin reminding Haru to feel the water brings a smile to Makoto’s face.

He reaches into his pocket and takes out the Bank of Japan business card again, turning it over in his fingers, studying it by the faint misty lamplight and the steady, lulling rhythm of the car.

_Uchida Kiyoshi_

He’s been doing this all day. Taking it out, fidgeting with it, putting it back again. Taking it out. Every time, it looks the same. Uchida Kiyoshi’s name is on one side of the card, and _tachibana-kun_ is scrawled on the other, an unfinished exhortation - to what?

Makoto can barely even remember what Kiyoshi looks like. They've never met. He's seen his photograph just once, on that day in the lift lobby with his postman, showing each other family shots. It seems so long ago now.

Mayuko had said that Uchida-san talked about him sometimes, at home. _That nice boy Tachibana-kun._

"So, Makoto, what did you think?"

Makoto snaps out of his daze at Rin's voice, calling his name. "Huh?"

"The Sydney Aquatic Centre. It's a damn fine sight, eh?”

Makoto smiles, though neither of them can see him. "Yeah. It really is."

And he's not just saying it. Even though he's not the one in the water anymore, even though he's left that life behind, one glimpse of the pool and Makoto knows what saved Haru back then.

The water is alive, and in the rather comparatively brief span of time that Makoto’s been aware of that, there have been few places he’s seen the water _more_ alive than here.

Something tells him that Haru, with his twenty years of feeling the water, thinks the same.

 

* * *

 

Haru drags Makoto by the wrist into their room the minute they get back to the apartment, prompting a series of loud, embarrassing and entirely unabashed catcalls from Rin and a “I’ll use my earplugs tonight, thanks for the warning, guys!”

The door locks with a firm click, and Haru turns on his heel to face Makoto.

Makoto shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“Did you find my note?” asks Haru. “I didn’t know where to stick it to make sure you would see it.”

“The book was a good idea. It’s the one thing you know I had to look at today.” Makoto smiles. He takes the folded yellow post-it out from his bag. “But… no. I don’t see anything here, Haru. It’s like a blank white space.”

Haru sighs. He drops his bag, and starts to takes off his jacket, and it strikes Makoto then _just_ how out of it Haru really is, because the first thing Haru always does when he gets home is to strip. Even if he’s not going straight into the bath, he hates having all these layers on him. It’s worse in winter when said layers double.

It is unheard of for an entire four minutes to elapse between Haru getting home and the jacket coming off.

“Haru,” Makoto says softly, holding out his hand to him.

Haru stops mid-zipper, and stares at Makoto. There’s a quiver to his delicate little lips, a dip in his brow, that shouldn’t be there. 

“Haru. Come,” says Makoto.

His voice doesn’t go any louder or higher, but it doesn’t need to. 

Haru takes a step forward, then another, and all of a sudden he is tumbling over his feet as he closes the distance between them and he seems to do nothing so much as _fall_ straight into Makoto, his palm slipping as easily into Makoto’s outstretched hand as into a winter mitten, his other hand coming to rest on Makoto’s broad shoulder as his face buries itself into the knot of the thick woollen scarf at his throat.

“Take this off,” mumbles Haru, into the fabric. “It’s scratchy.”

Makoto kisses the top of Haru’s head, and frees his neck as instructed before wrapping his arms tightly round his trembling boyfriend.

Haru dives right into the crook of his collarbone and doesn’t surface for an alarmingly long time. Makoto only knows he’s still alive because the warm exhales of his breathing tickle his skin. That, and Haru has an impressively capacious set of lungs that has been proven not to need air for far longer than they should.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Makoto whispers.

“It’s not,” says Haru fiercely, his voice coming out like a muffled whimper against Makoto’s neck.

Makoto sighs. “Were you having a bad day at the pool because of me?”

“It’s not because of you, idiot. It’s because of the water.”

“Well - ”

“Don’t say it’s because of you, Makoto. Don’t.”

Makoto opens his mouth again, then closes it. His hand slides up Haru’s back and strokes his hair gently. Haru makes a sound somewhere between a choke and a sob.

“Actually, speaking of your note, I have something to show you…”

Makoto sticks his hand in his pocket and takes out Kiyoshi’s business card.

Haru looks up. He takes it, staring at it in puzzlement.

“I found it in my bag when I was putting your note in the front pocket,” Makoto explains.

“And this is…?”

“A business card that belongs to Uchida-san’s son.”

Haru’s eyebrows shoot up. “Your mailman? The water spirit? What is it doing in your bag?”

“That’s the weirdest thing. I’ve never even met Kiyoshi-san. Uchida-san has two children, and I’ve met Mayuko-san, who works at that gym that I visit sometimes, but Kiyoshi-san…”

Haru turns the card around then, and his lips part in a small _o_ of surprise. Makoto sees the telltale shimmer in his eyes as they widen.

“What do you think it means, Haru?”

Haru shakes his head. “I don’t know. But I think it’s important.”

Makoto takes the card back from Haru, and lets his gaze linger on it a bit longer. Just in case, he takes his phone out from the back pocket of his jeans, and snaps a photo of it.

“In case I lose it,” he says.

Haru scoffs. “You probably would. Your house is so messy.”

The sound of Haru’s laughter, however slight, makes Makoto feel for a split second like things really might be okay after all.

“By the way,” says Haru, unzipping his jacket the rest of the way and hanging it up on the door. “Tomorrow’s our last day. Have you bought Ran and Ren the chocolates you promised them yet?”

At least, Makoto _thinks_ he hears the words _Ran_ and _Ren_ , they suddenly sound very, very distant, like Haru is standing on the edge of a cliff and Makoto’s on the bottom, listening to softly whispered words drifting down to him on the wind, straining to hear.

“What did you say?”

“Have you bought… the chocolates?”

“Haru,” says Makoto, with a creeping, certain chill prickling his skin, a chill that’s grown all too familiar. “Haru, it’s happening again.”

Haru turns. “What’s happening?”

“I can’t hear what you’re saying. I - hear something about chocolates, and - “

Makoto sees Haru’s mouth forming words, but he’s too far away now, he can’t make them out any more.

“I promised to buy chocolates… didn’t I?” says Makoto, almost to himself, under his breath. “I promised for someone. For who? My mind just - can't reach for it - ”

Haru stares at him, with a look that’s pure and elemental on his face, a look that takes Makoto back to a night with fireworks and lanterns on the water, a look that Makoto hasn’t seen on him before or since that night.

Until now.

 

* * *

 

_are you_

_tachibana-kun, are_

_things. cherished_

_things_

_blanking_

 

* * *

 

Cards.

 

* * *

 

_call_

_call_

_call me_

 

* * *

 

Cards everywhere.

 

* * *

 

_please_

_call me it’s important_

 

* * *

 

There are cards

cards

cards everywhere that Makoto can see.

He is opening the door of his apartment in Tokyo for the first time in five days, and there is a mountain of Bank of Japan business cards stuffed under the crack of the door, peeping out into the corridor outside, the well-known circular logo (is it brown? is it purple? he and Haru can never agree) barely visible on the corners here and there. Cards under his shoes, cards at his toes, cards piled up like autumn leaves, scattered across his threshold.

Words in that spindly hand catch his eye as he takes in the unbelievable sight in front of him. Fragments of sentences, parts of a whole, bits and pieces and all desperation.

He remembers Haru saying that he might lose the card. It's so absurd, a strangled laugh comes out of Makoto's throat before he can help it.

He seizes the nearest card to him, kicks his front door shut with a resounding slam, pulls out his phone, and dials the number on the card with shaking hands.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this update took such a long time! I mentioned this on Tumblr (and have been whining about it nonstop on Twitter, so you'll know if you're one of the unfortunate souls on my TL...) but I've basically been really caught up in my Official MH Fest fic which turned out to be way longer than I planned.
> 
> BUT IT IS DONE SO now I am back to your regularly scheduled water-sponsored destruction of all things joyful. Or maybe faint hope? Or both? We'll see.


	9. interludes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which love takes many forms.

**sunday**

 

Los Angeles, the City of Angels, where all the seasons melt into one, where winter’s said to be mild and pleasant and spring is a warm, sunkissed embrace, where the girls look like goddesses and the boys even more so, with cherry-red, bee-stung lips.

Everything in Los Angeles is a contradiction. Languid, yet fast-paced, slow and sensuous like a sleek lioness after its prey, biding its time, the touch of silk on skin, a smooth, low drawl with a tart tang that tastes like bitter lemon. And at the same time, sweet, so sweet -

 _hold me,_ it seems to whisper.

_never let me go._

Summer is calling now, and summer is hot, hot, sticky and sweaty, summer is -

_eternal_

“Eternal, huh?” says the boy lying on the beach, under his breath, as he shields his eyes from the sun. He knows it’s entirely unscientific, but he could swear that his glasses are warping its rays, making it burn brighter behind his eyelids.

Ryugazaki Rei is attempting to get some of this mythical goodness called a _tan_ , that his classmates in language school have been chattering excitedly about since the weather started turning warmer, and he’s not sure he’s going about it the right way, because it seems to him that a _tan_ should be something very beautiful indeed, but there is nothing beautiful at all about the shade of lobster red that he is slowly but surely turning.

He is slathered with sunblock from head to toe. It smells of coconut. It isn’t helping. Nagisa would laugh his head off if he could see him right now.

Rei sits up with a groan, consigns himself to the shade of the nearest foldable umbrella, and takes a long, thirsty drink of water out of a purple Nalgene bottle (BPA free, scientifically proven).

He gazes out at the Pacific Ocean. Like everything else in Los Angeles, it is picture-perfect. Like every time he looks at the sea, Rei thinks of Makoto.

Words on a card, written in violet ink and a strong hand, come unbidden to his mind.

 

_There are more than 23,000 miles of water between us._

 

Rei knows his geography. He has spent many hours looking at Google Maps, thinking about distance, thinking about how far away he is from everyone else, and most of all, thinking about the fact that they’re looking at the Pacific Ocean, same as he is.

The water separates them, but it also connects them, and Rei hangs on to that thought, because he finds it comfortingly beautiful.

Nagisa had sent him a quick email update yesterday, with a picture of Rin’s car attached. There is a shark decal on the window that Rei recognises because he’d helped Nagisa pick it out as a farewell gift for Rin.

 

_Mako-chan and Haru-chan are back from Sydney. They seem a bit preoccupied about something. I’m kinda worried about them but it doesn’t look like they’re in a fight sooo… I dunno, I guess I’ll try to arrange a Skype date sometime…??? Look, Rin-chan’s using my decal!! (/^▽^)/_

 

And it’s times like this when Rei wants to come to the beach most of all, because he’s so helpless when he’s so far away, but here, at the edge of the Pacific, he can remind himself that the waters will bring them back together one day, that somehow perhaps his emotions can carry on the waves towards Tokyo and Iwatobi.

 _Snap out of it, Rei,_ he tells himself sternly.

Makoto and Haruka will be okay. They will always be okay, he thinks, with a determined nod.

He gets to his feet and walks over to the vast expanse of blue, easing himself in gently.

 

* * *

 

**monday**

 

The gym smells like nougat.

“Why does the gym smell like nougat?” asks the girl with the ponytail and the black headband, as she walks through the doors.

The young man in the blue polo tee at reception whips out a box of chocolates and opens the lid. “Because the swimming guy just came back from Australia and brought a shit ton of gifts for everyone and like, nougat is a _thing_ there. Australian sweets are damn interesting. Here, Mayu-chan, have a chilli chocolate, it suits you.”

“Call me Mayu-chan again and you die,” says Uchida Mayuko, taking the proffered piece of chocolate from the reception man whose name she can't remember. She dubs him Blue Polo in her mind as she pops the chocolate into her mouth. It’s rich and dark and velvety, and she likes it, but she’s just about to open her mouth and ask where the hell the advertised _chilli_ is when suddenly it burns the back of her tongue like a kick to the head.

“I-interesting,” she chokes out. “The swimming guy? Who’s the swimming guy?”

“You know,” says Blue Polo. “The one with the muscles. And the mmm so delicious back. The one studying to be a swimming coach.”

“Oh!” Mayuko’s eyes widen. “Tachibana-kun?”

“Is that his name? He doesn’t come often enough for me to know.”

“Yeah,” says Mayuko. “My dad’s quite fond of him.”

“Your _dad_?” Blue Polo gives Mayuko an incredulous look. “What, are you sleeping with him or something?”

Mayuko reaches over the counter, grabs the cardboard lid of the chocolate box and smacks Blue Polo lightly.

“Ow! That hurt!”

“My dad’s the mailman in his building, dumbass. If I were sleeping with him, he wouldn’t be meeting my _dad_. God.”

Mayuko puts the box lid down on the table. “Anyway, he’s gay,” she adds.

Blue Polo leans forward, a grin spreading over his face. “ _Really?_ Hey, be a bro, Mayu-chan, introduce us.”

“Suck it. He’s dating Nanase Haruka.”

“Are you _kidding_ me? The swimmer? The freestyle guy?”

“Yeah.” Mayuko nods. She circles round the reception counter towards the staff room at the back, and puts her bag down on a bench. “They’re like, childhood sweethearts, or something. Don’t you read the newspapers? It’s been mentioned in some interviews.”

“Ah, who has time for _newspapers_ , they’re so boring…”

Mayuko throws a spare pair of balled up socks at Blue Polo’s head. “You work in a gym, at least read the sports pages! What if Nanase walked in here one day and you didn’t recognise him?”

“ _That_ one I’d recognise. I only notice the handsome sportsmen,” he says without missing a beat, grabbing the sock ball out of the air one-handed and tossing it back at Mayuko. She dodges, and it lands on the floor.

“You suck.”

Blue Polo grins. He slumps into his seat, and leans backwards with a dramatic sigh, flinging one hand over his forehead. “I guess I don’t stand a chance then… damn, they’re such a cute pair, I can’t take it!”

“I’ve never seen them together. Or met Nanase, even,” says Mayuko, shucking off her jacket and hanging it on a peg. She thinks back on some of the interviews she’s read, of her dad’s warm tone of voice when he’d talked about Tachibana-kun and his partner with the kind face in the photograph. _Kind_ wouldn’t have been her choice of word to describe Nanase; now, after hearing it from her dad, she can’t help but think it every time Nanase appears in the papers or on TV.

“Somehow, though…” she says thoughtfully, stretching her arms overhead to warm up, “something tells me hell’s gonna freeze over before anything gets between them.”

 

* * *

 

**tuesday**

 

The tall blond unfolds himself across the length of his bed, coming undone bit by bit, like a Chinese puzzle box. His hair spills down over his pillow like a sheet of fine golden straw.

He yawns, and reaches a hand out blindly towards the white wooden bedside table.

“Oi.” A rough hand smacks him in the shoulder, and he lets out a low whine. “Stop it with your fucking cigarettes, Shinya. They’re disgusting. I don’t know how you can smoke them.”

“I only smoke after sex,” Miyata Shinya purrs, easing the hand off his shoulder with a shrug like a watery ripple.

“Well, don’t do it at all, dickhead.”

“Mmm… I like it when you’re so controlling.”

“Ahh, shut up. I don’t know who died and made you captain. I hate you.”

“That would be my esteemed predecessor, who is not dead. Who is, in fact, now an Olympic gold-medal-winning national swimmer,” says Shinya, in a voice like honey, as he turns his head on the pillow to face his cranky bedfellow. It’s a hot summer night, the sort of sultry, simmering evening when he doesn’t want to get out of bed to have dinner, he doesn’t want to plan routines and review today’s practice timings, he doesn’t want to do anything at all. He can feel beads of sweat running down between his shoulderblades, so he kicks the covers off him.

“Fucking hell, Shinya, don’t do that without warning.”

“Why? You can’t be feeling cold. You’re melting even more than me. I can feel it.” Shinya nudges closer, feeling heat run up his thighs as he hooks a foot around a muscular calf.

“No, I mean, like… you’re still butt naked.”

Shinya raises an eyebrow. “That wasn’t a problem fifteen minutes ago when you were - ”

“If you finish that sentence I’ll kill you.”

It comes out like a low growl. Shinya merely grins.

“I’m not - I'm not gay,” mutters the boy in his bed, more to himself than anyone else.

“Of course not,” says Shinya.

“This doesn’t mean anything, right?”

“Of course not,” says Shinya, again.

“We’re just using each other.”

“Of course we are.” Shinya slides his foot slowly up the other boy’s inner thigh, with all his athletic flexibility. “Because we’re young men with pent-up urges, and we’ll never get the people we want.”

“It’s not the same. I can _too_ get a girl - ”

“Oh? Then get one.”

The boy ignores him obstinately, plowing on with a smirk on his chapped lips, lips that feel like sandpaper and burn like fire against Shinya’s. “But _you’ll_ never have Nanase.”

“Mmm. I'll just ogle him from a professional distance. You’re not as pretty as him, but you’ll do.”

“Speaking of Nanase… does he seem weird to you lately?”

“Hmm.” Shinya ponders how to answer this, tilting his head to stare blankly at the headboard of his bed. “Worried about something, maybe.”

“Maybe he and Tachibana had a fight. Maybe you’ll get your chance.”

Shinya laughs, except that when Miyata Shinya laughs it never sounds entirely happy; there’s always something in it that brings to mind a fleeting shadow in the light of the sun.

“No way,” he says, with unexpected hardness, steel in his voice. “Even if they had a fight. They’ll just kiss and make up. Those two can’t be without each other.”

“Yeah, I guess. They sure are lucky, huh… Nanase and Tachibana.”

Shinya’s tone grows serious, as he props himself up on his elbows and looks the other boy full in the eye. “They have the kind of luck that only happens to two in a million.”

As if feeling Shinya’s gaze on him, the boy turns his head slightly, and intense jet black burns a hole in Shinya’s skull.

“They’re in love,” is all Shinya says.

The other boy sputters, and stares at Shinya like he's been possessed. “What the fuck, since when did you become such a romantic?”

Shinya smiles, like a cat relaxing into a sunbeam. He withdraws his foot from the other boy’s leg and primly tucks it back behind his other ankle, pulling the covers back over his lanky bare body. “I’m all romance. I live for romance.”

“Goddammit. I hate you.”

Shinya inches in closer, resting his head in the crook of his companion's arm. He breathes in. Breathes out.

Before long, he feels the pressure of a cheek and sandpaper lips coming to rest on his forehead, and his smile widens. He reaches up with his long arms and pulls vice-captain Kurosaki Kenji down into an embrace, running his slender fingers down his broad back, playing the bony curve of his spine like a haunting piano sonata.

"This doesn’t mean anything. I’m not gay,” Kenji mutters again.

“Of course not,” says Shinya.

“This isn't... love.”

“Of course not.”

 

* * *

 

**wednesday**

 

_New Mail  
_ _From: Matsuoka Rin_

_Stupid Makoto, I told him not to show you that picture. Well, congrats, yes, I’m using it. The only reason I’m using it is because my car is so damn common in Sydney that I need some way to tell mine apart easily. Happy?_

_Anyway, about your question. Well, Haru was definitely weird, like, from the third day onwards I think. Like he had something on his mind. But I don’t think it was anything between them, they were still all touchy-feely as hell._

_Makoto didn’t seem weird to me._

_What’s going on with them? Why are you asking?_

 

The boy with tousled blond hair and an untucked shirt reads Rin’s email a few times through on his phone, then puts it back into his pocket with a furrowed brow.

He doesn’t even know how to answer Rin’s question, because he is all the way here in Iwatobi and they are in Tokyo and if he can’t _see_ them how _does_ he know? How does he explain how he knows? It’s a feeling that he has, from Makoto’s voice when he answered the phone, and the way Haru looks in some of the photos they sent him from Australia, like he’s smiling but not _really_ smiling, like he’s eaten one cream bread too many and something really doesn’t agree with him, but Hazuki Nagisa is an expert on his friends and he knows that Haru doesn’t eat cream bread. He doesn’t like sweet things. (Besides, they probably don’t have cream bread in Australia.)

So it must be something else.

He composes a reply in his head as he watches the scenery roll by, fields of rice and barley, growing tall and swaying in the wind.

_Rin-chan, i have no idea!!! i just have a feeling, a FEELING, you know?? p.s. i’m going to send you a huge pink shark decal so it’s even easier for you to find your car xoxo_

He laughs to himself, a warm, glowing giggle like a bright sunrise. The thought of Rin driving around Sydney with a huge pink shark stuck on his window makes him smile. His mood grows lighter, in spite of his worry.

_“Iwatobi Station, this is Iwatobi…”_

Nagisa hops off the train and breathes in the air of home.

His heart is full. His heart is in his mouth as he runs down the platform towards the bus stop, and he thinks, even though he sees this scenery every evening when he comes back from a full day at their local university, he will never get tired of it. He will never get tired of treading the paths where he and Rei used to run to school, or seeing the sea sparkling in the distance, thinking of times at the beach in summer with the others. Everyone’s grown up and moved on, moved away, but Nagisa is filled with content joy with whatever life brings him, because all of it is wondrous, even the familiar sights and sounds and smells of the last nineteen years of his life.

He looks up at the blue, blue skies, and thinks of Makoto and Haru and Rei and Rin, scattered across all the corners of the globe. He thinks it is so amazing that he has friends in three continents now. It’s like the red threads that connect them grow ever more sprawling, extending across hours and thousands and thousands of miles.

He decides to have faith, and sends a silent wish out on the wind that blows towards Tokyo.

_I’m here for you, Mako-chan, Haru-chan, I love you both, be strong, be strong!_

 

* * *

 

**thursday**

 

The girl in the yellow swimsuit with goggles to match looks up at her coach as she moves her legs in the water.

“That’s it, Miki-chan,” says Coach Tachibana in a soothing, encouraging voice, holding her in place with a light grip on her kickboard. “Point your feet a little bit more… yes, that’s right. I’m going to let go now.”

Himura Miki does her very best to execute a dolphin kick as demonstrated, pointing her feet intently. She starts moving forward bit by bit.

Coach Tachibana smiles. “Relax a little. The water’s going to find you too stiff. I mean, uh... you'll find it harder to swim if you're so stiff.”

Miki understands what Coach Tachibana meant the first time. The water is fluid and flowing. She needs to swim like a _real_ dolphin, or the water will reject her. Miki does not want the water to reject her. She loves the water. So she thinks about dolphins and how they frolic in the sea, and she tries to let herself move by instinct, settling into an up-down-up-down rhythm, pointing her feet, relaxing them.

She glances back at Coach Tachibana to see if she’s doing it right, but he’s now helping someone else with his dolphin kick, as the rest of the class practices around them.

Miki turns her gaze back ahead of her, and keeps going.

Coach Tachibana knows everything about the water, so she trusts him. His best friend in the world is Nanase Haruka the national swimmer, who mesmerises Miki when he’s soaring through his lane on TV, faster than a shooting star and more beautiful than any dolphin; and Coach Tachibana used to be the swimming captain in his high school, he even went all the way to _Nationals_ once with his team.

But something about the way the water coils up around him today gives Miki a funny feeling in her stomach, so she asks the water about it.

“Is Coach Tachibana okay?” she calls out, in her head.

**_he is teaching me something very important_ **

“Oh!” thinks Miki, turning around and swimming back. “That’s okay then. Coach Tachibana is the best teacher. He will do a very good job at whatever it is.”

The water bubbles in her ear, a warm, gentle laugh.

**_he is._ **

 

* * *

 

**friday**

 

The girl with long black hair gathers it up into a ponytail with a tattered scrunchie that’s about four years out of fashion, pushes up her glasses, and sprints across her university courtyard to clap someone on the shoulder.

“You!” she cries out.

The boy she’s just barrelled into stiffens for the merest of breaths beneath her hand, and turns around. Eyes like the ocean on a stormy day look into hers, and she swallows.

“Eep. Um, I’m sorry if I scared you…”

The boy’s expression clears, the oncoming dark clouds seeming to fade away beneath the surface of the sea. He blinks, and stares at her. “You’re Makoto’s classmate.”

“Tanaka,” she says. “Tanaka Sachiko. And you’re Nanase Haruka.”

“I met you at last year’s Autumn Festival,” says Nanase, still studying her face with an intensity that Sachiko finds just the very slightest bit unsettling. “You were playing the guitar on stage.”

Sachiko nearly faints. “I can’t believe you remember that. Makoto pretty much just said something like, _hey, Sachi-chan, this is Haru, Haru, this is Sachi-chan_ , and then you both got dragged off somewhere else…”

The slightest hint of amusement flickers across Nanase’s lips. “I have a good memory. And Makoto gets dragged into a lot of things.”

Sachiko nods emphatically. “He’s so damn popular, right? I can’t stand it.”

“He was always like that,” murmurs Nanase. “Good with people…”

Nanase’s voice trails off like he’s thinking about something. His gaze is unfocused, and he’s glancing slightly away, not quite at the ground but not meeting Sachiko’s eyes either. He’s smiling. He’s smiling like he thinks no one’s watching, smiling like he is looking at Makoto, and Sachiko melts a little bit inside. That's not a smile that Nanase Haruka shows on TV.

On TV, Nanase Haruka looks like any other young man in a swimming cap and goggles; in the post-race interviews, he never says very much. It’s not that he’s cold, at least, that’s not the feeling Sachiko gets (and she can’t imagine Makoto dating someone _cold_ anyway because the guy is basically a big freaking teddy bear). It’s just that he doesn’t have all that many words inside of him.

But up close, out of the pool, he is different. Nanase Haruka feels almost ethereal. It’s not just his fair skin and his lithe, slender frame, it’s his entire presence, a vibe that is impossible to describe. The cameras don’t do those famous blue eyes justice - eyes that certain reporters have a tendency to gush over ( _“looking into Nanase Haruka’s eyes is like gazing into whirlpools… you get sucked in and you don’t know when you’ll surface again”_ ). It kind of pisses Sachiko off because no one should be allowed to be talented _and_ good looking at the same time, but then she decides that he’s just a little bit on the short side now that she’s standing next to him, so that’s okay. He’s allowed to exist.

“You’re looking for Makoto?” asks Sachiko.

Nanase nods. “Waiting for him.”

“Here, by the lake, by yourself?”

Nanase turns his gaze back out over the surface of the lake, and the lilypads that dot its surface. “I wanted to be near the water.”

He says it matter-of-factly, like that is reason enough, like it should need no further elaboration.

Sachiko clasps her hands behind her back and follows Nanase’s piercing gaze. Perhaps it doesn’t, she thinks. Perhaps, for Nanase, that explains everything.

“Were you in his class today?” asks Nanase, suddenly.

Sachiko nods. “First period lecture.”

Nanase seems to hesitate for a split second. “How was he?”

Sachiko stares at him in bewilderment, trying to cast her mind back. “Eh? What do you mean? Is something wrong with Makoto?”

Nanase doesn’t answer, merely looks away.

“Well, we were doing some groupwork on curriculum planning. The two of us and a few others. And we got talking about the kids we teach, then we got talking about our younger siblings, and Makoto seemed a bit… out of it? I thought he was just homesick or something, thinking about them.”

“…I see,” says Nanase.

He lets out a sigh so tiny and quiet that Sachiko thinks she must have hallucinated it.

 

* * *

 

**saturday**

 

The boy with flame-red hair tears the cap and goggles off his head, and punches a fist into the air triumphantly, white foam flying up around him. “ _Yes!_ ”

The blond boy in the lane next to him flips him off as he surfaces, catching his breath in loud gasps. “Suck my dick, Rin.”

“I’m so flattered, but no thanks, you couldn’t take my teeth,” says Rin, flashing him a sharp grin as they both hoist themselves out of the pool.

“Oh, fuck you. Well, a bet’s a bet, you beat me fair and square.”

“Guys,” Rin calls out to the rest of his teammates, jerking a thumb back towards the blond boy. “Andrew’s buying all the drinks tonight.”

He reaches for one of the towels on the bench and walks towards the locker room, with the sounds of loud whoops and cheers at his back, and he smiles.

Life in Sydney, well - it’s no Iwatobi, for sure, but it isn’t Melbourne either. Rin spent a weekend there once at a music festival and drank so much coffee in the daytime (god _damn_ the coffee there is good) and beer at night (not so good) that he was sick for two days after that. Sydney is just exciting enough to stay always a little bit interesting, just sleepy enough that the whole city winds down before it exhausts him to the bone, just sunny enough to warm him, just chilly enough in winter to make the indoor heated pool in his university the best thing ever. That’s the closest that Rin ever comes to understanding what Haru means by _feeling_ the water; when it’s cold out and he’s in the pool he never really wants to leave, even if he isn’t swimming hard.

And having Makoto and Haru here in Sydney - _awesome_ , of course, and he wouldn’t have traded those few days for anything, but it was like having his worlds collide, and it made Rin feel a bizarre kind of cognitive dissonance, like new and old coming together and not quite joining at the seams.

The longer Rin stays away from Iwatobi and Japan, the more he’s starting to realise that some part of him maybe doesn’t know where home is any more.

Later, at the bar, he broods on this over a pint of ginger ale (since the Melbourne escapade, he can’t stomach the taste of alcohol without feeling like he’ll throw up) with the chatter of his teammates all around him. He’s sitting carelessly on a wobbly wooden chair with his arm slung round the back, and there is a hell of a lot of noise in the background and some old footy replays on TV, and as Rin draws his jacket close and tight around him, it occurs to him that he’d never deny the _homeliness_ of this city, that if someone asked him if Sydney were home he would say _yes_ , but if someone asked him if Iwatobi were home, he would say _yes_ as well in a heartbeat.

He thinks about Nagisa’s email, and can’t help scowling. Maybe once he receives the pink shark decal in the post he’ll feel differently about Iwatobi, as long as Iwatobi still contains the menace to humankind that is Hazuki Nagisa.

Thinking about Nagisa makes Rin think of Haru, and Makoto, and that question Nagisa had asked, and his cryptic reply about a _feeling_ , and Rin’s answer as always is that he has no fucking idea what Nagisa is talking about.

So what the hell is he feeling worried for?

Rin takes a deep drink from his glass. The bubbles tickle his nose as the fizz dances on his tongue, and the ginger sears his throat pleasantly. This isn’t some pissweak Schweppes, this is the real deal. It tastes like Bundaberg.

He thinks about that conversation with Makoto. Perhaps that’s the answer to his little conundrum.

Home is everywhere, because home is love, and love is -

Without someone like Makoto to verbalise this thought to, sitting here in the bar with his teammates, Rin is almost too embarrassed to finish the thought for himself and it dissipates into nothing at the back of his mind.

 

* * *

 

**the eighth day**

 

The young man in the suit with swept-back sandy brown hair slides into a booth at the family restaurant near his bank’s head office, across a university student wearing a blue shirt and dark, thick-framed glasses. “I’m so sorry I’m late!”

His dinner appointment smiles. He extends a hand, politely. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Kiyoshi-san.”

Uchida Kiyoshi takes it. Tachibana Makoto has a strong, firm grasp, and large hands for his age, though perhaps not surprising considering his size in general; Kiyoshi hadn’t quite been prepared for someone so tall and… wide.

They shake, and let go.

“The pleasure is all mine, Tachibana-kun.”

A waitress brings them the menus then, and he orders beef curry with rice without really thinking about it. Kiyoshi is a creature of habit, but Tachibana takes significantly longer, studying all the pages of the menu intently before finally deciding on cold zaru soba with a side of tempura prawns.

“It’s too hot for anything else,” he remarks with a wry grin, as the waitress leaves. She returns with two glasses of iced water and a pitcher.

Kiyoshi studies the boy in front of him. No, he thinks, not a boy, a young man, barely a few years younger than himself and... and his sister. He has an imposing frame that looks like it’s all hard edges and chiselled stone, shoulders sculpted from marble, but when he smiles everything goes soft. His voice is unexpectedly gentle and warm. His eyes are kind, the green of spring and fields of grass, but Kiyoshi senses that they’re always looking out, always seeing more than he lets on.

Tachibana Makoto is, by all appearances, a perfectly pleasant and very nice young man, and Kiyoshi wishes that the ground would open him up now and swallow him whole. Perhaps this was a terrible idea, he’ll probably pay for it sometime, but…

_Someone has to tell him._

_No one told me._

Tachibana hasn’t said anything. He’s swirling the cup of water in his hand, staring down at it pensively, almost like he’s forgotten Kiyoshi is there.

“I’m sorry,” Kiyoshi blurts out.

That seems to startle Tachibana. He sits up straight, taking his gaze off his water glass to look at Kiyoshi.

“I mean… ah, I wanted to start by saying, I’m sorry I made you wait a whole week to meet up after you called me, I was travelling for work - ”

“Ah, no, it’s okay, working in a bank must be very busy!” says Tachibana, with an understanding smile.

Kiyoshi doesn’t know why Tachibana is the one trying to make him feel better here.

“I wanted to meet you, because,” says Kiyoshi, as carefully as he can, “I heard from my dad. That the water asked you to teach it about love…”

A brief silence passes between them.

“Are you - ” Tachibana starts, seeming to have difficulty forming the words.

“No, no,” says Kiyoshi in a hurry. “I’m totally human. I’m not like my dad. But I… know something about this.”

He takes a deep breath. “The same thing happened to me. I made the same promise to the water.”

“ _What?_ ” Tachibana blurts out, in disbelief. “But Uchida-san - I mean, your father, he said - “

“He doesn’t know. I never told him.”

Tachibana’s staring at him now, openly, blankly, his mouth hanging half open. His gaze is so stark and honest that Kiyoshi’s starting to feel like pond scum, like this helpless young man here is relying on him to be the godlike, heaven-sent answer to all his problems, and he’s about to disappoint him _utterly_ and _terribly_.

“So what happened to you?” says Tachibana, his gaze fixed on Kiyoshi’s. “Is it the same thing that’s happening to me? Is that why I’m… everything…”

Kiyoshi nods. “It was… really hard to get you a message, Tachibana-kun,” he says. “I find it really hard to write about the - the deal. Things. That’s why I ended up slipping you so many cards. It was like - I’d write something and then my mind would go blank, like I couldn’t continue...”

“…like there was only white noise there,” Tachibana finishes for him, with a quiet, stoic resignation.

Kiyoshi nods.

“What _is_ this? What’s happening?” asks Tachibana. “It started with the - a song. A song that means a lot to me and Haru - my boyfriend. And next was my siblings. I have siblings. Haru tells me that. Rin tells me that. But I don’t… when I try to reach for their names in their mind, or their faces, it's touch and go. Sometimes there's something really faint... sometimes there’s nothing. When I look at photos of them, too. The same thing happens. Sometimes I see them there, and sometimes I don't. Am I losing my memory?”

“No. That’s not any use to the water. If you lose your memories of things you love, how will you teach anyone about love?” Kiyoshi points out.

“Then why can’t I remember?”

“It’s not about memory. It’s about consciousness - ”

Kiyoshi is interrupted by the waitress bringing them their food and wishing them a good meal. Tachibana turns that warm smile on her and thanks her back, and Kiyoshi marvels at the fact that he can do this, he even has the ability to _start_ to do this, while he’s having bombshell after bombshell dropped on him and discussing losing his sanity.

 _Maybe,_ thinks Kiyoshi with a faint, burning hope in his chest, _maybe he’ll be the one who…_

He takes a sip of iced water, forming his next words in his mind with care, as Tachibana turns his attention back to him.

“Consciousness…?”

“Yeah. Tachibana-kun, I’m just going to say it bluntly, I’m sorry - ”

“It’s okay. Tell me,” says Tachibana, and there’s something in his gaze that throws Kiyoshi for a loop all of a sudden. Gone is the springtime and the light, rustling breeze, there, behind Tachibana's glasses, is the glint of all that is solid and indestructible about nature, there is the thick, sturdy trunk of the pine that stays evergreen through the coldest and darkest of winters, there is the bamboo, perennial, growing tall and fast, with an unbreakable strength that rivals steel.

Kiyoshi feels that hope stir again.

He opens his mouth, and speaks.

“The water is taking over your consciousness when it comes to the things you love.”

He scoops up a spoonful of curry and rice, puts it into his mouth and chews slowly as he watches Tachibana absorb this, the incomprehension on his face giving way to dawning, sudden shock and widened eyes.

“So that’s why Haru can hear me when I sing. The song, I mean.”

“Yeah. You _are_ singing. It _is_ in your mind. But you’re not… you’re not conscious of it. You’re not the one voicing, or hearing, or experiencing it. It’s the water. That’s how it’s learning about love.”

Tachibana swirls his zaru soba sauce with his chopsticks. He’s eating slowly, with an equanimity that’s almost unreal. “Okay. I get it now. And this will continue.”

Kiyoshi nods. He could beat around the bush, he could sugarcoat it, but if it’s Tachibana… he doesn’t think he needs to, somehow. “Yeah. It will get worse.”

Tachibana’s gaze meets his directly again.

“Will I forget… no, not forget. Will it happen with my parents?”

“Yes,” says Kiyoshi. “My dad is different, because he’s - you know. I can still sense him even in those blank periods, because water and water spirits, there’s some connection. But I can’t - with my mom, and my sister, I’m barely there anymore. Even though I keep trying to fight back.”

He laughs, a short, bitter laugh. “I think the water is pissed off as hell with me right now.”

“And will it happen with Haru?”

“In the end,” says Kiyoshi. “Yes, probably. Your love for him burns strongest within you, so it might take a while before the water has enough of you to completely take it over, but…”

Tachibana takes a drink of his water and sets down his glass.

He doesn’t seem in the least unnerved. And that unnerves Kiyoshi.

“You said you were fighting back. How do you do that? Isn’t a debt a debt? Haru told me not to make deals with the water because it’s not human, and it doesn’t see the world like we do, and I guess the terms weren’t quite what I thought they would be, but that’s my fault, right?”

He says all this in one long breath, and it’s then that Kiyoshi sees the slightest tremor in his fingers gripping the glass, and he sees how much Tachibana is trying to keep a lid on it, how much of his inner strength this is taking.

“I can’t tell you exactly how. I’m just… pushing back,” says Kiyoshi, spreading his hands helplessly. “I made this promise when I was very young. It’s been with me a long, long time. But, I think that…”

He pauses, trying to gather himself, tapping his fingers on the table as he studies Tachibana.

Is he right to hope? Is he right to place all his trust - and all the burden - on the shoulders of this young man?

He makes a snap decision, and goes with his gut.

“I think that if the water was satisfied, if it learned once and for all, it would release both of us.”

He can’t read Tachibana’s answering gaze. It’s curious, and puzzled, and thoughtful all at once.

“If it learned once and for all about love, huh?” Tachibana repeats, under his breath.

A pang of guilt twists itself inside Kiyoshi’s heart. He knows what he’s done, and he knows it’s something devoutly not to be wished upon any other human being, but Kiyoshi is desperate, he is desperate to remember how to live and how to _love_ again, and he has a feeling that the water has wrung everything it can out of him over the past seventeen years, that it’s restless and tired and can’t get anything more and that’s why it’s gone in search of this greener pasture -

Except that, perhaps, it’s got more than it’s bargained for this time.

This time, it’s got someone who knows how to love, who  _really, truly knows_.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a real challenge to write, but I knew it was coming...
> 
> I always wanted to do something like this, where I skip between different characters' viewpoints and I show Makoto and Haru through their eyes, and through their own filters of what matters to them. In the end, this chapter is really a meditation on love, life and what it means to these people as much as it is about Makoto and Haru. And given the universal, _everywhere_ , omnipresent nature of water and the role it plays in this story, I wanted this to feel all-encompassing, to feel like you are spanning all corners of the world while intimately existing in each of the characters' minds at the same time.
> 
> So that's the story of how this chapter was born. It's one of my own favourites (did I already mention in Chapter 6 that I have a _thing_ for Miyata Shinya?). I hope you enjoyed it too.
> 
> Meanwhile, developments continue apace!
> 
> If you haven't seen it yet, the AMAZING mlim8 drew [this fanart](http://mlim8.tumblr.com/post/111616337333/dont-ever-make-deals-what-the-water-said-by) for Chapter 1 that makes me all weak and gooey because I swear that's exactly how it looked in my head when I pictured the scene. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! :D
> 
> And as always, thank you to all of you for reading and following along. Things should be building to a climax soon ♥


	10. into the dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Haruka wins more than a race, and Makoto has a conversation after hours.

“Hey! Are you listening?

Well, that’s silly. I know you’re listening, so I’ll just talk, like this. Ah, it’s really nice to be sitting here in the pool by myself after hours, huh? It’s so full of people usually. This is so peaceful.

Anyway, I have something to tell you…”

 

* * *

 

The summer sun’s last rays are setting by the time Haru makes it to the train station. He’s in his tracksuit, and only the tinge of pink on his cheeks, the sheen of sweat on his forehead and that slight hitch of breath that Makoto knows so well, gives away the fact that he’s been running from the pool towards Makoto as fast as he can. The rest of Haru looks as impossibly breathtaking as he always does, his hair’s a little mussed and his jacket rumpled but all of it is Haru and all of it is exactly what Makoto needs to see right now.

“Haru,” he says, breaking out into the hugest of smiles and removing his headphones.

Haru reaches out and touches Makoto on the arm, light and lingering, like a kiss. “Did you meet him?” he asks.

They start walking towards the train platform, and Makoto rummages through his bag for his Suica card, which always seems to be in the last place he looks. This time, it shows up in the back pocket of his jeans.

“Yes,” he says. “And, Haru… the same thing happened with Kiyoshi-san. He made the same deal, to teach the water about love, when he was very young.”

Haru stares at him. “What? The same deal? Didn’t your mailman say - ”

“Yeah. Even water spirits don’t know everything about the water, I guess? That reminds me, he didn’t know about the water taking you that time, either.”

They tap their cards on the barrier, and Haru frowns. “So, with Kiyoshi-san… what’s his situation now?”

“Well, um,” says Makoto. “It’s still happening.”

The station’s steady stream of commuters press in around them as they make their way down the corridor, and Makoto doesn’t miss the way Haru takes the opportunity, as he always does, to touch his fingers discreetly to Makoto’s as the backs of their palms brush; but today there’s a tremor to the contact, and it lingers a little longer, like Haru’s afraid to lose the feel of Makoto under his skin.

Makoto’s gaze doesn’t stray. He looks forward, feet moving across the tiled floor side by side with Haru’s as he twines their fingers together briefly, then lets go. “But he helped me, Haru. He helped me a lot. I think… he might have shown me a way.”

“If he showed you a way, why didn’t he just take it himself before this?” asks Haru, shooting him a sceptical look.

Makoto’s heart goes out to Kiyoshi again. There’s an ache in him that opens up like a blossoming blood-red rose, tender as a bruise, as he thinks of how it must have been for Kiyoshi all these years, watching everything he loves fade from him bit by bit, and facing it alone.

“I think, maybe... he couldn’t,” says Makoto.

There's a pause before Haru speaks. “And you can?”

“I’m still thinking about it.”

Makoto feels Haru’s gaze on him, silent and thoughtful, always thoughtful.

The train comes to their platform, and they board, jostling for pockets of space in between the late night crowds of Tokyo. Makoto finds himself pressed up against a pole that’s cold at his back, metal resting against the thin fabric of his shirt.

Haru’s arm comes round Makoto's side to grip the pole as he steps closer. Makoto knows full well that Haru has unnatural grace and balance and is perfectly capable of staying upright on the most unstable of trains without holding anything. Haru’s arm stays where it is anyway.

As the train moves off with a lurch and a bump, Haru leans in towards him, and speaks with a quiet urgency under the hum of the carriage noises.

“What is it? This way that Kiyoshi-san showed you…”

Makoto smiles. “To give the water what it really wants.”

Haru draws back, just enough for Makoto to catch a glimpse of eyes widening slightly, of parted lips trying, and failing, to form a response. “How…?” is all he manages to say, before trailing off.

“I haven’t quite figured it out yet. But don’t worry, Haru, it’ll be okay. Remember what you always used to say? The water is alive, but - ”

The train comes to a sudden halt then, and Haru falls headfirst into Makoto’s shoulder in a way that manages to look totally natural along with the wobbling of everyone else who’s standing, but Makoto knows there’s nothing accidental and everything calculated about it, he feels the warmth of Haru’s body against his, the firm grasp of his hand on his waist.

He breathes in the lingering scent of sweat and chlorine from Haru's dark hair, and inclines his head, ever so slightly, so his lips meet the curve of Haru’s ear.

“There’s nothing to fear,” says Makoto, smiling.

 

* * *

 

_Why do you swim?_

_Because I want to swim with you. And with all my friends. But tomorrow -_

 

_“I’ll swim to beat you,” Haruka says out loud, as lies on his bed in pale blue pajamas and stares at the ceiling fan spin overhead._

_The words feel strange as they leave his lips, foreign somehow, the way they roll off his tongue, and Haruka realises that they strike a discordant note because they are not words that he or Makoto have ever said to each other. Nor has he ever imagined they would be said. These are Rin words, fighting words, fire words._

_There is a disquiet stirring in his heart, and the water had noticed it during today’s practice, well before Haruka had walked home with Makoto and heard those words fall from his mouth, against the backdrop of his fading smile._

**_you seem troubled, nanase haruka  
_ ** **_you are not moving like you usually do_ **

_“What about Makoto?” Haruka asked, in his mind, ignoring the gentle rebuke in the watery susurration all around him, continuing to swim in his own way. “What about Makoto, today?”_

**_tachibana makoto?_ **

_“Do you see any other Makoto around here?” Haruka retorted, somewhat peevishly._

_As if paying him back for this rudeness, the water had gone silent after that._

_Haruka knows better than to think one thing’s connected to the other, though; he knows that the water seems to have no conception of manners or social norms, so he hadn’t been particularly bothered, and had in fact been rather startled when at the end of practice, just before hoisting himself out of the pool, the water finally deigned to offer its opinion._

**_there is something burning within him_ **

_Haruka, one palm already supporting his weight by the poolside, hesitated. “Burning? You mean like Rin? You said Rin burns.”_

**_not like that one_ **

_“Then what are you talking about?”_

**_what is that feeling_ **

**_..._ **

**_love?_ **

_“Love?” Haruka repeated, blankly._

**_that time, when you jumped in after the fiery one  
_ ** **_you said_ **

**_you love_ **

_Haruka turned around, launched himself into another lap. Makoto and the others would simply chalk up his lateness to his odd, unpredictable inclinations to stay in the water as long as possible sometimes._

_"What does that have to do with anything?" he asked._

**_that is..._ **

_Haruka kept going, stroking languidly down the middle of his lane, watching the blue ripple in front of him into an indistinct, swirly outline of a vague humanoid form, then something like a marine creature, fins and tail and roundish shape, turning long and sleek before exploding into a thousand little white bubbles._

**_that is the same feeling  
_ ** **_tachibana makoto is giving off that same feeling_ **

**_why?_ **

**_i do not understand you humans_ **

_"Beats me, too," Haruka muttered under his breath, as he surfaced at the other end of the pool, too distracted by these strange new revelations even to shake the water off his hair._

_Now, hours later, Haruka can't help but wonder now how to make sense of it all, how to piece it together, how to reconcile all these different pieces of the puzzle that is suddenly Makoto -_

 

_I want to swim with you_

I'll swim to beat you

_It's meaningless without you_

It's no good if you're not there

_love_

that same feeling

love

 

_Haruka feels like there's something he's missing, like perhaps he doesn't understand Makoto, for the first time in years, and there is nothing more unsettling than the feeling of Makoto fracturing, taking Haruka's world along with him as he exhales and spins off on his own orbit to join those who burn._

_But if Makoto wants a serious race -_

_then Haruka will give it to him, without question._

 

* * *

 

“You want me to teach you about love, right?

But you also told me, once, that what fascinated you was my fear. The fact that I’m afraid of water, and yet I teach young humans not to fear you, to accept you.

You wondered how that could be.

I’ll tell you now.”

 

* * *

 

A whole three weeks go by with an almost unnatural calm, and Makoto is reminded of something Haru had said to him, that time is nothing to water, to something that has existed since the beginning of time itself.

He is coming to realise there is much that falls into that category. He is coming to realise there is more that falls into that category than doesn't. There is a lot that is  _nothing_ to water, and that is where all its problems with human emotions begin.

One night in the middle of studying, Makoto grasps on to the names of his siblings, _Ran_ and _Ren_ , and he even remembers their faces clearly for a split second, and he's supposed to be making notes about basic sports safety principles but he ends up abandoning it all to write down _Ran Ren Ran Ren Ren Ran Ren Ran twins twins twins twins_ over and over again in his notebook. 

The next morning, he wakes to a bleary white noise in his head and a page that looks like static.

One night, he reads an email that Rei sent to all of them, enclosing a short essay written in English for Rin to check, numerous pictures of the postcard-perfect beach in Los Angeles and one singular picture of his sunburnt arm.

 

_For your eyes only, to demonstrate the ill effects of UV rays and overexposure thereof, not to be circulated, for your health and education &c. With regards, love to all, Rei_

 

Makoto can't help grinning to himself, until -

Before his very eyes, the picture of the arm fades away into a blur, until he's looking at a spot on the screen that's like a dead pixel.

Makoto doesn't try to print the picture, or load it up on his phone. He knows what he'll see. Or won't.

He doesn't tell Haru about it, either.

One night, Makoto's phone rings and he looks down to see _Uchida Kiyoshi_ on the caller ID, and he answers with a friendly hello, and has a perfectly pleasant chat with the young banker about how hot the weather is this summer, how busy work is and how nice it was that they finally got to meet, the end result of which is that, Makoto gathers, Kiyoshi is anxious to beg Makoto's indulgence and kind discretion regarding matters discussed, particularly if Makoto should happen to encounter his mailman in the corridor.

Makoto makes every placating reassurance, and when Kiyoshi asks with concern if there have been any more lapses for him, Makoto smiles down the phone and tells him that everything is under control.

Makoto asks Kiyoshi if _he_ is okay, and the pause that comes from the other end of the line makes him think that perhaps no one has ever asked this question of Uchida Kiyoshi, and he feels a sensation like a hand pressing down on that phantom bruise in his heart.

One night, his mother calls to say that _blank_ and _blank_ received the chocolate from Australia in the post and they love it and they send their love to Haru-chan too, and Makoto finds himself blurting out a question before he realises what he's saying, asking if _they_ are there and awake because he would love to speak to them, and his mother says _they_ have gone to bed but they'll be sure to call him over the weekend, and Makoto is simultaneously excited and terrified.

One night, Makoto is listening to Haru talk about his teammates and his day at practice as they prepare dinner together in Haru's kitchen, and he thinks to himself that he'll do anything, anything it takes, to never lose this.

Makoto accepts his fate with a heart that's growing steadily every day, works up the nerve to do what he needs to, before it's too late.

Makoto counts the nights, and remembers all his promises.

 

* * *

 

“It's the same. Fear and love.

Does that surprise you? It surprised me too.

But I was thinking about it. And honestly, while I love Haru with all my heart, it's also the most frightening thing in the world to love someone that much, because that time, when he vanished, when you took him, it nearly destroyed me.

So I think you can't love something or someone without always losing yourself, even just a little bit. I know that's how it is for me, anyway. And that's scary. That's the fearful part."

 

* * *

 

_Haruka knows that Makoto is far behind him by now._

_He almost slows down. He's well ahead of the rest of the pack, and he can afford to ease up a little, but he remembers his promise to Makoto to race him seriously._

_So Haruka sprints, sprints to the finish, with all the speed in him, and touches the wall._

_"Well," he thinks, "it's over."_

_Haruka isn't quite sure what's over, even as he thinks the thought. Maybe he just doesn't want to face the possibilities._

**_you swam well today_ **

_The water's praise still always comes as something of a surprise to Haruka, no matter how often he hears it. He doesn't respond in words, just sends out a feeling of acceptance._

_The water speaks again, unexpectedly._

**_are you not pleased with your victory_ **

_Haruka stares at the pool's turbulent surface, waves hitting his chest from the movement of the swimmers all around him. He can't answer this. He doesn't know how to answer this till Makoto comes back._

_By the time Makoto completes his race, Haruka's taken off his cap and goggles, looked up at the results board, looked back down at the water. He hears Makoto's heavy breathing by his side, and his eyes fly open as he glances over._

_Makoto's head is buried against his palm on the wall, those broad, steady shoulders heaving powerfully with ragged gasps, and as Haruka watches, feeling his heart twist inside him, a single drop of water rolls down Makoto's cheek, and he can't -_

 

_that's a tear_

_thinks Haruka_

 

_Haruka, who knows the water so well, who knows everything about water, knows he is right, even if he can't say how. He just knows. The water quietly settles into a pensive silence around him that shouts louder than anything else. Haruka doesn't need to go any closer to Makoto, or to touch a fingertip to that drop and bring it to his tongue to taste the saltwater. He knows._

_Haruka feels his blood run cold. He doesn't know if Makoto will bear his touch right now. He does the only thing he can._

_He calls his name._

_"Makoto..."_

_And then Makoto's head whips up, and it's the most beautiful sight Haruka has ever seen._

_The strong arc of Makoto's neck, the back of his head and the splash of his hand hitting the pool, sends water flying everywhere in little crystalline droplets that sparkle and vanish, but they're all the more breathtaking for how ephemeral they are in the sunlight, and he laughs, he laughs with an unfettered joy and a pink flush to his cheeks._

_"I lost!" says Makoto, and his voice sings with something that makes Haruka's heart suddenly soar._

_He feels his own eyes go wide, his mouth fall open._

_Why? thinks Haruka, staring at his best friend._

_Why?_

_Why do you cry, and then smile like everything's fallen into place?_

 

* * *

 

One day, Makoto does something he hasn't bothered to do since he first got a smartphone. He plugs it into his computer, and downloads all the photos from it.

Makoto is pretty terrible at taking photos for their original intended purpose, which, he thinks, is _probably_ the preservation and remembrance of happy moments. The vast majority of pictures on his phone are ones that he takes to remind himself of something, because since starting university, juggling a part time job and having friends and family in three different continents, Makoto's mind seems to have gone decidedly the way of a very irregular sieve.

Makoto is not a sentimental picture-taker, not like Nagisa, who'll push them all into photos at every possible opportunity, and now that he is looking at the randomness that is his photo roll, he feels a pang of regret like a slow churn in his stomach because there are hardly any photos of him and his friends, hardly any photos of him and Haru.

He pauses as he looks through his most recent photos, starting from the one of the poster on the bulletin board in his department that advertises the kinesiology professor's talk.

There's the one of Rin's shark car decal, and the one of Kiyoshi's business card, and it's only now scrolling through these pictures that it strikes Makoto how precious it is that he can see them all clearly. Because in the end, the truth is, there's love in all of them. He loves what he's doing at university. That decal is full of Nagisa's love for Rin, and Rin's love for Nagisa as well, though he'd never admit it. And even Kiyoshi's card, Kiyoshi's whole stack of cards now decorating Makoto's living room (Haru had built them up carefully into a little card house, and left his handiwork on the table), replete with all the pains it took him to get them to Makoto, speaks to the love he must have felt for someone he's never even met, in their desperation and their _tachibana-kun_ , _tachibana-kun_ , _please_.

Among all the photos, there is a video sent from a number that Makoto has saved as _Ginger(?) from Haru's team_. Makoto knows that it must contain something interesting because he sees in his mail that he'd forwarded it to Nagisa and Nagisa had sent a response best described as _enthusiastic_ , at the very least.

He opens the attachment titled  _KAWAIIIII.JPG_ with a faint hope, but as he expects, he doesn't see anything in it.

There's a now painfully familiar blank in his mind where that memory should be, echoes of a duet that ring down empty corridors. When he opens the video file, titled _karaoke.mov_ , he hears a low humming silence, sees shadowy figures that look like himself and Haru, if he makes a huge effort. He knows they're probably surrounded by people, but the rest of the 4 min 38 sec clip fuzzes out like a badly tuned channel.

Makoto closes the file, and thinks, as he swirls the glass of water on his table, _hey, you've got it all wrong_.

 

* * *

 

_It's not till later, much later - weeks, perhaps, months even - that Haruka begins to understand, even a little._

_That feeling when he jumped into the water during the relay, that feeling of love -_

_That was the feeling burning within Makoto._

_The water had known it all along, and it had told Haruka, even if it had never understood just what it was saying. Makoto had never wanted to beat him so he could win, and leave Haruka behind. Makoto had wanted to beat him so he could stay with him._

_For Makoto, it's always been meaningless without Haruka._

 

* * *

 

"You know that the more you love someone, the more you can end up hurting because of them.

But you surrender. You surrender anyway, because you love them.

And that's how I feel about you, you know?"

 

* * *

 

_And it's not till another year passes, when Makoto kisses Haruka for the first time, smushing their faces together clumsily in the dark and then laughing that laugh again, like a warm spring breeze, that Haruka begins to understand, even a little, the depth of this -_

_How it is that Makoto could lose, and yet stand tall, with his heart full._

_How it is that Makoto could cry, and smile at the same time._

_How it is that Makoto could see Haruka slipping away from him, even before Haruka himself knew it, and still tell him "you really are the best in the water, Haru-chan", with a sweetness that's achingly pure._

_Makoto's love has always been so constant and unfailing that it was ready to let Haruka go, and fly free._

 

* * *

 

On Sunday night, Makoto writes an email to Haru, schedules it for delivery on Tuesday morning at 10:00:00, and sticks a note to himself on his monitor to remember to delete it if he chickens out and sees this any time before Tuesday 09:59:59.

Perhaps he won't chicken out, and he'll see it anyway.

Makoto doesn't quite know what to expect, but he knows that anything's better than sitting around and waiting for the inevitable to happen to him.

 

* * *

 

"I don't think I'll ever stop being afraid. Some part of me will always be a child, will always think that there's a monster lurking beneath your surface. But love is facing that fear, knowing that a monster might take you, and plunging in anyway.

I'll tell you what my friend Rin said to me. He said that if you just open your eyes, love is everywhere. And sometimes Rin can be really - well, _Rin_ \- but he was right about this.

So I'll give you everything. I’ll do better than just teach you love.

I’ll _show_ you."

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was all about tying the threads together. (I'm also thankful that it returned to a normal length - for me! - after I busted 6,000 words last time...)
> 
> I constantly looped Death Cab for Cutie's ["I Will Follow You Into The Dark"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMMS73NoEg0) while writing this, and it ended up lending its name to the chapter. That song is one of my quintessentially MakoHaru songs. It's so sweet and heartbreaking yet achingly tender and the feeling of it is very much what I always hope to bring across when writing MakoHaru (the line _fear is the heart of love_ particularly resonated with me this chapter).
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading and sticking with me ♥ I think this is now officially my longest fic ever, and the end is... well, definitely more in sight than it was a few chapters ago, but there may be a little while more yet.


	11. eternal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Makoto is offered an unexpected choice.

_I am the life force of the planet_

_I am everywhere_

_I am_

 

* * *

 

It’s the strangest of sensations, letting go.

Makoto doesn’t know how, but he can feel it in his body, coursing through his veins. It starts from the tingling in his toes and shoots right up into his chest, spreading out from his heart, into his fingertips, the back of his neck, his head; his breath catches in his throat, and then suddenly it’s like he no longer has any breath to speak of.

He wonders, fleetingly, if this was what Haru felt when he disappeared into that puddle of rainwater, that one time.

**_everything?_ **

There’s an uncertainty, a kind of confusion that’s almost tentative and fragile, like a block of ice that’s melting slowly away under the warmth of the sun’s embrace.

Water gives life, thinks Makoto, but water can also turn cold, freeze and lock itself away, and that’s what Makoto is here for. Funnily enough, he’s not all that afraid anymore - or rather -

He is, but it’s okay. It’s okay.

Now that Makoto is actually here, facing the thing he’s always feared and loved all at once, Haru’s words stay with him like a constant, steady hand on his shoulder, giving him strength.

_There's nothing to fear._

“Everything,” says Makoto, out loud. “I’ll give you everything.”

**_that was not part of the deal_ **

“You’re wrong,” says Makoto, quietly, and he feels a hot tingle round his calves that stings.

“You’re wrong,” he says again. “Because love _is_ everything.”

The water trembles.

Makoto goes under.

 

* * *

 

_Haruka thinks back on a memory. He’s surprised that it doesn’t hurt less, with Makoto’s kiss lingering on his lips. It doesn’t hurt less, not at all. It hurts more._

_He’s in high school again, and he’s standing at the edge of a platform. It’s summer. His hands are cold. His wrist is bare. He doesn’t look up._

_“I’ve decided.”_

_It’s not even the words that throw Haruka off balance. He barely registers them, for a split second. It’s not the words, but the tone of Makoto’s voice; the quiet and the calm after the fiercely swirling storm of seconds ago. Like the sea’s suddenly gone still, thunderclap still ringing in the air._

_And Haruka knows it’s at moments like this when the water, usually so restless, is at its most dangerous. When it stops everything for a second. Because you never know what’s coming next._

_“I’m going to a university in Tokyo.”_

_And there it is._

_There it is. You never know what’s coming next._

_The fireworks light up the night sky, and Haruka runs to the water’s edge with a terrifying blankness in his mind, like a slowly widening whirlpool, opening up into a gaping black hole._

_“Teach me about loss.”_

_He remembers his promise, and he tears through the dark, searching for an answer._

 

* * *

 

“I just remembered something,” says Makoto. “When I first got your letter… do you know why I said yes?”

 **_no  
_ ** **_the why was not important_ **

Makoto smiles. “It was because Haru told me the water spoke to him.”

**_nanase haruka?_ **

Makoto wonders why the water sounds so surprised. But understanding settles quickly into his bones, as he flexes his fingers and spreads his arms wide, so wide that he feels they could encircle the world twice over; he opens his heart and so much comes rushing in that he doesn’t know how the water bears it. How does it even remember his name? Or Haru’s name?

How, when they are so small, and this - all this - so very, very vast?

His mind goes to pieces for a while, shattering like a raindrop hitting the pavement, and it takes him a suspended eternity to get it back together.

“Yeah. He’s always known, you know? He used to say it all the time. _The water is alive._ And we all always thought it was one of those Haru things, one of those feelings he has about swimming, about being in the water. But it wasn’t. He meant exactly what he said, all along. And I never knew it.”

Makoto opens his eyes, and breathes.

Except it’s not really breathing, whatever he’s doing, because time doesn’t seem to be passing at all, and there’s no air - or rather, there’s _too_ much air, there’s too much of everything.

“I never knew,” he says, again.

**_so?_ **

So casual, so insouciant, rude, almost, but not quite. Being rude means you care about something, thinks Makoto, and just like Haru’s said all along, the water doesn’t care, for better or worse.

“Well, it was like, there was this part of his life that I always thought I understood, but actually, I had it all wrong, all along…”

**_……_ **

“So I thought, if I let you into my life too, the same way, I would understand how Haru feels a little better. When he talks about accepting the water, about not rejecting it.”

**_how is this relevant to our current situation, tachibana makoto_ **

Makoto almost laughs. The sound that comes out of his throat is more like a whisper, blending into the susurrations all around him, the quiet and the thumping rhythms of crashing waves.

“I said yes because I love Haru,” says Makoto, simply. “That’s all.”

He tries to move, and it’s not so much like his usual forceful thrashing or even like the way Haru moves, a clean, smooth glide through the water, because that implies some separation still between the water and his body, and in this moment Makoto isn’t quite sure where one ends and the other begins.

He tries to move, and he doesn’t so much _move_ as feel his consciousness spread, like his gaze has travelled a few feet forward of its own volition, like he’s suddenly _there_ when a few moments ago he was _here_. And that’s when he realises that it doesn’t really matter because he’s everywhere at once.

 

* * *

 

“Maki-chan! You’re up!”

_goggles snap_

_someone’s diving in - ah, there’s the smell of chlorine, the sound of pattering feet -_

_that voice -_

“Nice dive! Keep your legs straight!”

_Coach Sasabe_

He’s in the pool, then, and not just any pool, the pool at Iwatobi SC Returns…

Makoto blinks, and

 

* * *

 

“Whooosh! Just like that!”

“What the hell are you talking about, Momo…”

“Show me again! Show me again, Mikoshiba-senpai!”

_these voices are different… they’re loud_

_chlorine, again, but… different, somehow? chlorine and sweat_

_and movement_

_so much movement_

It’s not really that he’s _stepping_ aside to let the swimmers through, thinks Makoto, it’s more like flowing, like sliding round their bodies, allowing them to exist in the blank spaces where he draws these airless breaths.

He’s in the Samezuka pool, and Mikoshiba Momotarou is tearing through the water like a torpedo on his back, and Makoto catches the barest, slightest feel of flaming warmth blossoming through the water before he blinks again and

 

* * *

 

Salt stings his tongue. He licks his lips, and finds that they are salty too.

A school of fish whips past him like a spray of water, glimmering little silver drops that scatter, bloom, and then disappear into the dark.

Something is pulling him. Pushing him. Pulling.

_ah - it’s getting stronger - i can’t_

The tide sweeps in, rough and fast, and Makoto looks up to see a sky the colour of darkened ashes, torn in two by a sudden, searing flash of lightning, and there’s a thumping in the distance like drums, drums of ill omen.

Makoto surrenders to the torrent ripping through the waves, to the roiling crash of the ocean.

_there’s something there…_

_a boat?_

Makoto tries to turn, tries to blink himself elsewhere, but even as he pulls, pulls desperately with all his might, it feels like there’s always an inexorable tide pushing him right back.

_no_

_no, it can’t be -_

There’s no escape.

The water rises, swells angrily, crashes down on the boat, and the last thing Makoto sees before he wrenches himself away with a mighty heave is red hair and an open mouth, gasping, taking in a mouthful of saltwater, sinking next to a old man with wrinkles and a peaceful smile on his lips who’s already passed out cold.

_no - no -_

 

* * *

 

The sound of something hitting the sand reaches Makoto. He stirs into consciousness.

There’s someone on the edge of the beach, right where the sea meets the shore. Makoto can’t see who this person is. They’re standing just far enough so their feet don’t touch the water, they’re keeping their distance, with a fury and a sound that rings hollow in the vast, empty silence all around them.

Makoto can’t see who this person is, but he knows, he knows anyway.

_Red hair and an angry snarl, a helpless cry into the sun._

The tide rises, sweeps up the goggles lying, discarded, on the beach, washes them out into the Pacific, where they’re lost forever.

These are not the waters of Japan.

These are not the waters of _now_.

 

* * *

 

In that instant, it sinks in for Makoto that he’s not just everywhere -

he’s everytime.

 

* * *

 

_everytime_

_every_

_time_

_I am always_

_I am eternal_

 

* * *

 

Makoto could breathe in all the air of two billion years of existence and still be static, still be here, still be there, still have his feet rooted firmly to the seabed and feel the coral grow around him. Reefs of iridescent red, pink, orange, every colour imaginable, spreading, sprawling out for miles and miles, as far as he can see and beyond.

Corals grow slowly, Makoto knows. They take thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years. In his heart, he knows they are ancient; in the blink of an eye, he sees them light up the dark depths of the ocean like fireworks. He feels time passing by like the brush of a wingtip on his face, soft and light as it soars into the sky, and he feels every minute, every second, all at once.

He reaches out for something, anything, to keep him anchored, and what he finds is always what he comes home to, in the end.

Eyes of startling blue, the tiniest upward curve on delicate lips.

Makoto reaches out, reaches for Haru, and he finds -

Haru sitting by the edge of the sea in Iwatobi, a fleet of little lanterns with candles in them, drifting away on the currents. It’s summer, warm and balmy and there’s water in the thick humid air, and the sense of his consciousness scattered all over makes Makoto feel dizzy.

He understands now. He understands why the water does what it does. Why he’d had to lose himself, bit by bit, like that -

This is too much.

It’s too much, to be everywhere at once like this.

With a desperate effort, Makoto funnels all his consciousness through one point of focus.

_All my love._

_All my love for you, Haru._

Haru watches the lanterns, hugging his knees to his chest, and touches a fingertip to the water.

 

* * *

 

_“Take this from me.”_

**_?_ **

_"Take this from me," thinks Haruka fiercely, feeling the seawater pool around his fingertip. He lets his hand sink beneath the surface, touching his palm to the cold, wet sand._

_He clenches his fist round a handful of sand and gravel. It slides through the gaps between his fingers, rough and scratchy._

_The water doesn’t answer, letting its silent perplexity hang in the air for now._

_“This is it, isn’t it?” Haruka mutters, and it’s not till a heartbeat later that he realises he’s saying it out loud. The words come out low and hushed, and angry, though exactly who, or what, he’s angry at, Haruka simply couldn’t say right now._

_“Teach me about loss, you said. If this isn’t loss - ”_

**_is it?_ **

_“Of course it is. I’m losing Makoto. Makoto.”_

_Haruka grips his handful of sand tighter, and feels it burn against the innermost creases of his palm. At this rate, it’s going to rub his skin open, and the salt in the water will sting and scorch him raw._

_“Makoto.”_

_The distant chatter of the crowds down at the other end of the beach drift to his ears. The lanterns are floating away, receding into the horizon, a sea of lights fading further and further from him, leaving him in the dark with nothing but Makoto’s name on his lips and the water, always the water, alive._

_Haruka buries his head into his knees, and sends out a silent thought once again._

 

_Take this feeling from me, if you want to know what loss is._

_Take it._

_Please._

_Take it away._

 

_Haruka feels something brush past his forearm, something like a sudden, warm kiss on the wind._

 

* * *

 

Makoto falls back.

“That - that’s not - ”

The words die out even before they’ve fully left him, before they’ve formed. They melt into the vastness of the water like little droplets. They become part of the all and the everything that water is. All his feelings, all his love, all the memories.

“Why?” he whispers. “I was reaching for Haru - why - why that moment?”

 **_you tell me, tachibana makoto  
_ ** **_you are the teacher here, are you not?_ **

“Yeah, but I - I’ve never had that memory! I never knew that happened, Haru never told me what he did after he ran away from me, that night…”

 **_you followed your love  
_ ** **_this is where it led you_ **

Makoto feels everything in him reeling, like he can’t breathe, which is funny because he doesn’t really _need_ to breathe, right now. He’s just doing it out of habit. He realises with a start that he hasn’t taken a breath since he opened his mouth to start speaking.

He reaches, tentatively, for Haru again, and the tiniest of tremors runs through his consciousness as he wonders what he might find this time. _Haru, Haru - all these years -_

But before the vision of black hair, blue eyes and fragile, pale skin resolves itself, the water interrupts.

**_should i?_ **

“Huh?” Makoto asks.

Haru blurs, and fades away, beyond his grasp. It’s just him and the water now.

 **_you tell me, tachibana makoto  
_ ** **_you are the teacher here, are you not?_ **

**_should i do as nanase haruka has asked?_ **

Makoto isn’t quite sure he fully understands. Or, rather -

The mere prospect of what the water is asking is entirely too much for him to understand.

“What?” he repeats, dumbly.

**_should i take nanase haruka’s loss away from him?_ **

“That’s not possible,” Makoto breathes.

The water shrugs, undulating and rippling round Makoto like a velvet cloak settling on his shoulders.

**_it is no big matter  
everything comes back to me, in the end_ **

**_i could take it_ **

“But that’s… that’s in the past,” Makoto says. “That was two years ago.”

**_what is that to me?_ **

**_i am eternal_ **

Makoto swallows, and watches the world flash before his eyes, eternal.

In that moment he glimpses a vista of centuries, of millennia, of tundra and footprints in the snow, of oceans with icebergs in them that stand taller than Tokyo Tower, of verdant green rainforest on the banks of a tropical river, and these are sights that Makoto has never seen before. They are not _his_ sights, but at the same time, they are, they’re of the earth, and so is he.

It all passes in the time that it takes him to blink, and the water remains.

_Eternal, huh?_

“If - if you took Haru’s loss from him, would he forget?” asks Makoto.

**_forget?_ **

**_he will no longer have the feeling_**  
**_is that forgetting_**

“Not really, I guess,” says Makoto. “He’ll remember, won’t he? About our fight, about what I said to him… so he just won’t feel anything about it anymore?”

**_that is correct_ **

“Then that’s easy,” Makoto says, firmly.

His choice is clear. There was never a choice at all.

_I’m sorry, Haru._

_I’m sorry._

“No. Don’t take it from him.”

 

* * *

 

_Haruka lies on his bed in Tokyo, and touches his fingers to his lips._

_Why does it hurt to remember this now? he wonders. Why does it hurt more? Surely, now that Makoto has kissed him and held him in his arms, now that he knows there was never any danger of losing Makoto, it should hurt less - it shouldn’t hurt at all -_

_But there’s a pang driving through him like the sharp point of an icicle, and instead of melting in the heat of his body it stays there, wedged into his heart, cold and unforgiving._

_And he remembers what he asked, that day._

 

_Take it away. Take this from me._

 

_The icicle twists, wrenches itself further upward, into the back of Haruka’s throat._

_He should never have doubted. He should never have left Makoto like that, calling his name, alone on that platform overlooking the water._

_Most of all, he should never have asked the water to take away that feeling; if it had, if it had been one of those times when it listened to him and took him seriously, he would never have known how it feels for someone to walk away from him, and he would never have known that when that person comes back to him, at the end of the day, it's like having the seasons change all at once, it's like watching the sakura explode into pink on every tree around him, and the ice melting over the ponds, and the fish leaping through the water._

_Sometimes, you have to let go, in order to hold on tight._

 

* * *

 

Suddenly, they’re back on the shore, and Haru is hugging his knees to his forehead, and he’s shaking, shaking so hard with dry, heaving sobs that Makoto feels a searing pain shoot through the water like a white-hot arrow.

**_explain, tachibana makoto_ **

The water’s cool, detached tone is like an icy shower hitting Makoto on the back of his neck. His breath catches, and he tries to pull himself away, but the sight of Haru by the shore keeps him transfixed.

 **_explain  
_ ** **_if you love nanase haruka, why do you let him bear this_ **

“It’s because I love him,” says Makoto.

His voice cracks as he fights the swelling tide inside him, as he fights the feeling that threatens to spill out into tears.

“It’s because I love him. And if he doesn’t bear this, then he’ll be stuck where he is forever. Nothing will ever change.”

The water hums.

**_change…_ **

A memory stirs, floats to the surface of Makoto’s mind, in the deep blue where he’s suspended.

 

_did you know that the amount of water on earth has stayed the same for two billion years_

 

It’s funny, thinks Makoto, the things that you recall at times like these; funny how the water had said this to him so long ago in an almost offhanded way, and now he’s remembering it and he realises that while everything around the water has changed over two billion years, it hasn’t. It’s stayed the way it is, eternal and always.

**_change is… desirable?_ **

“Not always,” says Makoto, with a rueful smile. “Sometimes, you don’t want it. You really don’t want it at all.”

He falls back, goes under the surface, tears himself away from the sight of Haru on the beach. He lets his consciousness dissipate out across the sea. The lanterns, drifting along on the waves in the distance, glow warmly in the darkness; their shimmering reflections in the water cast little spots of light on Makoto, right where his outstretched arm would be if he were in his body.

He tries to reach out to Nagisa and Rei, but there's no sense of their presence on the other end of the beach. They've left, then. They've left the Obon Festival for the night, and that means - that must mean -

It's late.

It's drawing near midnight. There's hardly anyone left on the beach. Haru is still here, all by himself.

_Haru..._

Makoto feels a phantom tear pricking his eye. He can't rub it or blink it away. It stays there, stinging and hot.

The candlelight dances on the blue water, and the water keeps its silence.

 _It’s quiet._   _Too quiet._

The stillness, the unnerving calm, the lack of ripples and movement, all reverberate in their shared space like an overstretched bubble, tense and ready for Makoto to make a sound and pop its barely-there skin.

The water bides its time, and waits.

“But love isn’t about giving someone what they want,” Makoto says eventually.

He feels the water stirring, feel a tingling in his senses.

 **_i do not understand  
_ ** **_is love not something that brings you joy_ **

**_nanase haruka is not feeling joy_ **

The gentle smile on Makoto's face widens.

“You’ve got it all wrong,” he says.

The water bristles all around him. If it were human, Makoto would venture a guess that it’s offended.

“Didn’t I say, just now? You can’t love without always losing yourself, a little bit. I think I had to face the idea of losing Haru… and Haru had to face the idea of losing me, before…”

Makoto’s let himself slip while talking, and he’s been drawn back to Haru once again, like the tide coming in.

His words trail off as he catches a glimpse of Haru, now standing up, standing still by the shore with his back to the water, arms clutched tightly round himself as he walks slowly away. He looks so small, so broken and cracked.

Makoto wants to look away again. He wants nothing more than to avert his gaze. But he doesn’t, not this time.

This time, he concentrates with all he has, keeping every fibre of his consciousness fixed on that one point of connection between him and the boy who’s always been by his side, on the spark that hangs between them in the sticky air of this summer night.

**_before?_ **

Makoto breathes.

He reaches out on the balmy wind to brush past Haru’s cheek, one last time, before this memory swirls and fades away into the past where it belongs.

“Before we could truly learn to love each other.”

 

* * *

 

_I’m sorry, Makoto, thinks Haruka._

_I’m sorry._

_I love you._

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your patience with this chapter. I've had several other fic projects to work on this past fortnight, so this took a bit longer than usual, but I'm so excited to finally reach this point. (It was actually supposed to be Chapter 9 in my original outline, I've clearly let this fic get out of hand...)
> 
> This chapter was pretty emotional ♥ I hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> Thanks for reading! You can always yell at me on social media.


	12. penelope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Haruka waits for a long, long time.

Nanase Haruka's world comes to a standstill at 12:42 pm on a Tuesday afternoon, though he doesn't realise it.

He'd been training in the pool since 7:00 in the morning, gone for breakfast with his teammates at 9:23, checked his phone for any messages from Makoto (none, but that was only to be expected; Makoto's morning habits could be best described as _lacking_ and more accurately as _what morning habits?_ ), then headed into consecutive lectures for the next two hours and fifteen minutes.

At 12:15pm, he finally emerges with a slight headache from the bewildering rabbit-warren depths of his university building, makes his way across the courtyard to the Economics and Social Sciences building and meets his ginger-haired teammate for lunch at the restaurant two blocks down.

Haruka orders his usual, saba donburi with iced barley tea, then reaches into his bag for his phone, but before he can even take it out he's been distracted by excited chatter from his teammate about the latest from the grapevine, which is that Captain Miyata and Vice-Captain Kurosaki have both been scouted for the National Team, but - in an unexpected turn of events - Kuro-kun has said yes, and Miya-chan has turned it down.

And the question on everyone's lips these days (everyone who pays attention to gossip, which, essentially, is everyone except Haruka), is: "Why would _anyone_ turn that down? Especially _Miya-chan_?"

Miyata Shinya is the national university-level record holder for long-course, 800m breaststroke, and Haruka knows that he would do well for the National Team, but Haruka also knows better than anyone else that everyone has their own reasons for swimming, and swimming for their country is not always one of them.

He says this, over a sip of iced barley tea, and adds that it's none of anyone's business why Miyata-buchou swims as long as he's happy, but his teammate furrows his brow and asks, hasn't he noticed? Everyone has. Everyone's noticed that things between Miya-chan and Kuro-kun have been somewhat _tense_ these days, and the team can't help but wonder how Miya-chan will feel when the seniors graduate and Kuro-kun goes off to his glittering new career.

"There's nothing glittering about it," Haruka points out. "You have to wake up with the sunrise and practise six days a week, and there's also a lot of running and weight training involved."

"Don't be like that, Nanase! You're such a wet blanket!"

 _Well, that's really how it is,_ thinks Haruka.

And then their food arrives. They dig in, Haruka in silence, his teammate somehow continuing to eat and talk a mile a minute at the same time.

At 12:40 pm, Haruka remembers that he has a phone he should check once in a while, and as he reaches into his bag he's startled, for a moment, to feel vibrations through the canvas fabric, in that insistent pattern that means a phone call rather than a text.

_It's unusual for Makoto to call me in the middle of the day like this. Who..._

He takes his phone out. The number isn't one he recognises. He stares at it, then flips it open reluctantly.

"Hello, this is Nanase."

"HARU-CHAN!"

It takes Haruka a split second to recognise the voice, and when he does, it takes him the other half of that second to process that he isn't hallucinating, that this person is really calling him.

"Ren? Is that you?"

"Haru-chan, you have to come, onii-chan - onii-chan is - he's - "

Ren is breathing in huge, loud gasps, his voice is trembling, and he sounds like a child again, like the little boy who used to sniffle when the popsicle half that Haruka gave Ran was bigger than the one he gave him.

"He's in the hospital," Ren chokes out.

Haruka's chopsticks drop to his tray with a clatter.

They slide off the table, and onto the floor by his feet. The sound echoes round their little corner of the restaurant and makes his teammate jump, but Haruka doesn't hear the _"Nanase! What the... hey, Nanase, you okay?"_ , doesn't see the waitress come walking over briskly with a smile and a new pair of chopsticks for him, barely hears Ren's cries down the phone from miles away.

For the first time ever, he doesn't even register the delicious smell of saba shioyaki from atop his rice.

It is 12:42 pm on a Tuesday in Tokyo, summer vacation is round the corner, and to the tune of a L'arc~en~ciel song playing from the restaurant's tinny speakers (he knows this song, because Makoto likes this band, and he has often heard him humming it under his breath when they study together, and Makoto Makoto _Makoto_ ), Nanase Haruka's world comes to a standstill.

(Though he doesn't know it yet.)

 

**x**

 

It's only in the taxi, on his way to Shinjuku, that Haruka sees he has an unread email from Makoto, sent at precisely 10:00 am this morning, in addition to the fourteen missed calls and seven frantic texts from Ren.

His finger hovers over the buttons. He presses _Open Mail_.

He reads it.

 

* * *

 

**_zero_ **

 

"He's perfectly healthy, Tachibana-san."

Makoto's parents are by his side, ashen-faced, his mother's eyes are red and swollen, and Ran is clinging on to Haruka for dear life, as if she's afraid that if she lets go, Haruka, too, will fall into a mysterious coma the likes of which the doctors have never seen before.

Ren is sitting on a chair, holding his father's hand so tightly that his knuckles are white.

Haruka moves to stand beside Makoto's mother, and rests his hands on her shoulders.

Makoto's father stares at the doctor. "What do you mean?"

"His heart rate is normal. He's breathing well, strong and evenly. All his vital functions are in good condition..."

"Then why isn't he waking up?"

And Haruka thinks, Makoto gets his quiet strength from his mother.

"We'll keep running tests on him, Tachibana-san. Please don't worry, he's in good health."

Haruka doesn't turn around. He keeps his eyes trained in front of him, his grip on Makoto's mother's shoulders, and as she raises a hand to clasp his, he realises that somewhere along the way he's become the one being comforted here.

Haruka doesn't turn around because he knows he will see Makoto's face, his lips slightly parted, the slightest blush of light pink on his cheeks; he knows he will see his chest rising and falling slightly, his arms resting by his side. There is some kind of machine hooked up to him, but Haruka doesn't want to know what it is because he knows it doesn't matter.

There is nothing that these doctors can do for Makoto, and there is nothing he can do for the Tachibana family, nothing at all.

 

**x**

 

Makoto sleeps.

Haruka looks away.

Ran's tears glisten on the back of his arm. He thinks, in a daze, _Ran's really grown taller, if that's where her head is now, in relation to my body._

Haruka looks away, looks down at the floor, counts the tiles in their alternating blue and white pattern. The colours make him think of water. The water makes him think of Makoto.

And Makoto sleeps, somewhere Haruka can't reach him.

 

**x**

 

He's even emptied his fridge.

Makoto's fridge always has milk in it, if nothing else, because he doesn't like his coffee black; he always takes it with whole milk and a generous dollop of sugar that makes Haruka shudder.

But Makoto's fridge is empty, now -

 

_empty, like Makoto’s body_

 

And it's when Haruka opens the door of the fridge and sees that there's nothing inside, and the light is off and there isn't even any cold air coming out, that he finally, finally, falls apart, breaking like a brittle autumn leaf that's been torn off the bare branches of his tree, harsh and sudden.

He shakes, wrapping his arms round himself as he takes a step back, and crumples against the bare kitchen counter.

And it's absurd, and Haruka thinks of everything else that's happened today; he’s somehow lived through the email (those words seem so far away, so distant, so many pixels on the other side of a screen from Sunday night), the bleached-clean smell of the hospital and the tightest of hugs from all the Tachibanas, a kiss on his cheek from Makoto's mother, and a squeeze of his hand from Ren.

All of that, and he hadn't yet broken; not even with mutliple rereads of the last text he'd received from Makoto, a simple _good night!_ sent on Monday at 11:45pm, after Haruka had gone to bed and told Makoto, as was their ritual, that if Makoto only slept earlier he wouldn't have such a hard time getting up in the morning.

It's absurd that he's managed to pull himself together against this onslaught, made it all the way to Makoto's house, gone to the fridge for a glass of water like he always does first thing he steps in, and then -

well, and then.

Haruka looks at the empty fridge, and as his fingertips scrabble and reach for the counter behind him, searching for something, anything solid to hold on to, the ground feels like it's dropping from beneath his feet, and the air is heavy with the deafening sound of silence.

 

_makoto makoto makoto_

 

Haruka stands, on unsteady feet; he runs over to the windows and throws them open, taking in deep, ragged breaths of the dusty city air outside. It’s hot and sticky and Makoto never closes his windows like this, not in summer, because he gets warm so easily and without ventilation he’d probably melt into a puddle.

But Makoto’s not here now.

Which is why the fridge is empty and the windows are closed and there’s a yawning chasm inside of Haruka, so deep and dark that he can’t even find the tears to cry, or the anger to be mad at Makoto, or the water, or anything. It's so _Makoto_ , to have gone and done something like this, and it's not like Haruka hadn't known that, perhaps, it was coming, because ever since Makoto's dinner with Uchida Kiyoshi the mailman's son, Makoto has been thinking.

When Makoto thinks, things happen.

When Makoto thinks, if they don't have the money to go to a training camp, they simply make their own; when Makoto thinks, he shows a scared little boy the sky and opens his heart to the water; when Makoto thinks, Haruka gets whisked to the other end of the world by Rin, and gently, bit by bit, all the walls he's built up round himself come crumbling down at a touch, and Makoto's smile at the airport blows them all away, every last bit of dust and debris.

When Makoto thinks, nothing is impossible.

Makoto thinks, all the time and sometimes too much, and Haruka waits, always.

He waits for Makoto to come back to him.

He waits, and rests his elbows on the windowsill, breathing in deeply as his shoulders slump and his chin comes to lie on his forearms.

It smells like rain.

 

**x**

 

**_zero plus eight_ **

 

“Nanase-san?”

Haruka looks up.

There is a man in a suit with swept-back sandy brown hair standing beside him. Haruka doesn’t know who he is. Neither does he understand why this man’s gaze has travelled from him to the hospital bed where Makoto is lying, unchanged from eight days ago. He remains, say the baffled doctors, a paragon of perfect health, except for the fact that he won’t wake up.

Tachibana Makoto, the Sleeping Beauty of the Tokyo Medical University Hospital, the nurses have taken to calling him; enamoured of the tiny smile on the corners of his lips, his broad shoulders and the way his olive brown hair falls messily over his forehead.

Wait till you see his eyes, thinks Haruka, and hear the way his voice wraps around you, like a tender hug.

“Yes?” he asks the man in the suit, who’s still staring at Makoto. _Someone Makoto knows? One of his friends?_

Haruka has met a fair number of Makoto’s friends. This man is not one of them.

The strange visitor seems to snap out of a reverie at the sound of Haruka’s voice. His head whips back towards Haruka again, and he sticks out a hand. Haruka notices it’s shaking slightly.

“I’m Uchida Kiyoshi,” he says.

Haruka blinks.

He takes Uchida Kiyoshi’s hand, and shakes it, uncomprehending.

“I’m sorry for coming to see Tachibana-kun. I know it’s not my place…”

“Why?” Haruka finds himself saying, abruptly, and then thinking that Makoto would chide him for being so blunt.

“I was trying to reach him. And when he wasn’t answering any of my calls or messages, I went round to his place, but he wasn’t there either, so I - forgive me, Nanase-san, I looked up your university and said I really needed to contact your coach about something urgent…”

“So he told you I was here with Makoto,” says Haruka. “Why were you looking for Makoto?”

Uchida Kiyoshi pulls up a chair, and sits down. Haruka notices that he maintains a respectful distance from both Makoto’s bed and Haruka himself.

“Haven’t you noticed, Nanase-san?”

Haruka has noticed a lot of things. He waits for Uchida Kiyoshi to continue, hands on his lap, fingers curling slightly.

“The water’s gone silent.”

Haruka has noticed that.

Uchida Kiyoshi fidgets, and watches Haruka with anxious eyes.

“Yeah,” says Haruka.

“It’s been silent for - ”

“Eight days,” Haruka finishes.

“Yes,” says Uchida Kiyoshi. He pauses.

His gaze darts from the floor, to Makoto, to Haruka, and back to the floor. When he speaks again, his voice is so low and strained that Haruka can barely hear it.

“Also, my dad is ill.”

Haruka is taken aback. “Your dad? The - ”

 _The water spirit_ , he wants to say, but he’s cut off by Uchida Kiyoshi’s nodding and finger to his lips.

“Yeah. He suddenly fell ill… eight days ago. He’s laid up at home. I just went to see him.”

Haruka’s hands come together on his lap, fingers clasping round each other, squeezing his palms tight like a prayer. A prayer to what, exactly, he doesn’t know.

“Do you know anything?” he asks.

Uchida Kiyoshi lets out a breath like a long, slow sigh. He runs his hand through his hair, and turns to look at Makoto again.

“What did you tell Makoto, when you met him?” asks Haruka, an edge creeping into his voice.

“I said that if the water got what it really wanted, it might release us both. And - I - ”

Uchida Kiyoshi’s voice catches in his throat. He looks at Makoto again.

“I’ve been released,” he says, simply.

Haruka stares.

“Eight days ago. It all came back. I could remember everything. I could remember my mother and my sister, I could hear what they were saying, I was myself again, Nanase-san, all the time - it was like waking up from a dream - like seeing the world in colour after seventeen years of black and white…”

Uchida Kiyoshi’s voice trails off, a note of lingering wonder in it. Haruka knows that feeling. It’s the feeling that he always gets when he sees the ocean, when he sees Makoto smiling at him.

“I don’t know what Tachibana-kun has done. But I knew I needed to speak to him.”

“Well. You can’t,” says Haruka, more harshly than he’d intended.

Uchida Kiyoshi’s face falls. “I know. I’m sorry, Nanase-san. I’m so sorry.”

 _You should be_ , is what Haruka wants to say, but as he looks at Makoto, lying there peacefully, as he looks into the worried face of the young man in the suit sitting across from him, he says, instead, “Makoto would be happy for you.”

Uchida Kiyoshi’s eyebrows shoot up.

“That you’re free now,” Haruka finishes. “Makoto would be happy.”

He tries to smile. He can’t. Makoto is better at he is at things like this, with smiling through the pain. But Haruka knows that he’s speaking the truth, and even if he can’t say it with a smile, he can at least let Uchida Kiyoshi know that Makoto would never want anyone to feel bad or to say sorry over something he’s done for them.

“Go live your life, Kiyoshi-san. Seventeen years is a long time to be asleep,” says Haruka.

 

* * *

 

**_one_ **

 

The water is alive.

Haruka knows this, as surely as the doctors pronounce, with confidence, that Makoto is alive; just as they can tell from his healthy heartbeat and his slow, steady breaths, Haruka can tell from the pulse of the water.

Haruka dives in, and thrusts his fingertips forward, carving a space for himself like he always does. He opens his eyes to the vista of blue.

 _Hey_ , he whispers in his head, like he’s done every day for the past year.

There’s no reply. Haruka hadn’t expected one.

It’s still unnerving, one year on, and it still makes him feel empty inside, like he’s losing a part of himself.

Haruka keeps swimming. He glides through this strangely hushed world, keeping his gaze ahead, and his fingers hit the wall in a new personal best time for him in his 200m freestyle training, and his coach comes over to congratulate him on a job well done.

The water keeps its silence.

 

**x**

 

_From: Hazuki Nagisa  
_ _Subject: how are you_

_hey haru-chan_

_how are you doing?_

_it’s been one year today, hasn’t it?_

_are you okay? you can call me if you want to talk._

_i went to visit ran-chan and ren-chan last week. they’re okay. they’re doing all right. they miss their parents and their onii-chan and you._

_when you see mako-chan, give him a huge hug from all of us in iwatobi and tell him to come back soon, we need him._

_and don’t give up, haru-chan, don’t give up, mako-chan will come back._

_nagisa_

 

**x**

 

By unspoken appointment, Haruka meets Makoto’s parents in the hospital lobby.

They live in Tokyo now, in Makoto’s empty apartment. The twins are in the care of a relative who lives near Iwatobi as they finish high school.

“Haruka-kun…”

Without saying a word, Haruka goes up to Makoto’s mother, and enfolds her in a hug.

They head up to Makoto’s ward, where he has lain, unchanged, for three hundred and sixty-five days, still the same smile on his lips, still the same even rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. He continues to be the healthiest patient in Tokyo Medical University Hospital. He continues not to wake despite the best efforts of the world around him to keep on moving.

He is a still point, the centre of Haruka’s universe and the eye of the storm.

Makoto’s father puts an arm round Haruka’s shoulder, and they watch in silence as Makoto’s mother perches on the edge of his bed, smooths back the fringe from Makoto’s eyes, and smiles.

“He feels so warm. So alive,” she says. “I wonder where he’s gone…”

Haruka swallows, hard.

“One year,” murmurs Makoto’s father.

Haruka feels himself go weak as he stares at Makoto’s face, wondering if he’ll ever see those green eyes again, and before he knows it he’s leaning his weight on Makoto’s father, and the arm round his shoulders tightens.

“I’m sorry,” Haruka murmurs, as he starts to shake.

“Oh, Haruka-kun, no, don’t say that… it’s been so hard for you too,” says Makoto’s father, in his firm but caring way, so much like his son’s.

“Haru,” whispers Haruka.

Makoto’s mother rises off the bed to clasp his arms, to offer him comfort, and he thinks, again, that he’s the _worst_ , why does it always end up like this, with the Tachibanas looking after him?

“Haru,” he says again, a little louder. “Makoto called me Haru. Call me Haru.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, and feels kind, gentle lips being pressed to the top of his head.

 

* * *

 

**_two plus twenty_ **

 

“The strangest thing happened the other day, Haru…”

Haruka peeks round his locker door at Rin, who’s standing in front of his half-open locker, staring blankly into space with a pensive look on his face. When he gets like this, the red of his eyes seems more burgundy-wine than fire.

Mellow, thinks Haruka, the way they’ve all become over these past few years, as their mid-twenties beckon and they all take their own steps towards the vast unknown of adulthood.

All of them, except one.

Haruka watches Rin, and waits, knowing he’ll continue.

“I was talking to Rei… you know, his English is really good now, and I was showing him an article about butterfly technique that was written in English, and he was helping me with some of the translations. And then he asked me how you were. And I said, you’re okay, but - ”

Rin pauses abruptly, like someone’s snatched the words right off the tip of his tongue.

Haruka stares. “Rin?” he prompts.

Rin shakes his head, as if coming out of a daze. “What?”

“You were saying something? About talking to Rei. And something strange happening.”

Rin takes his backpack out and shuts his locker door with a light slam. “I was?”

“Yeah,” says Haruka.

“Well, I was talking to Rei, and he was helping me read this article. It’s terrible… since I moved back from Australia, my English has become like, rusty as hell.”

“But what happened?” Haruka asks, as his fingers curl tightly round the strap of his bag.

“Huh?” Rin gives him an odd look.

“You said something strange happened the other day.”

“Nothing happened. He told me that Nagisa’s got a girlfriend now. Her name is Emi. Wild, huh?”

Haruka files this interesting factoid away in his head for another time. Rin’s humming under his breath as he walks over to the other side of the locker room, and starts combing through his hair.

“Hey, Mikoshiba-buchou’s in town with his fiancee. Want to join us for dinner?” Rin calls over his shoulder.

“I can’t,” says Haruka. “I’m going to the hospital.”

“Huh? Who’s in the hospital?”

Haruka pauses, his hand on the zipper of his jacket.

“…Makoto,” he says.

The name leaves his lips like a quiet, wistful spell. The syllables hang in the air between them, _ma-ko-to_ , made louder by his absence, more fleeting and ephemeral by the memory of his voice, his laugh, his smile; the way he used to be the first to congratulate them after a strong race, the way he would be the last to dive in for the hug. Makoto always liked watching them celebrate together, chuckled at Rin’s arms coming round Haruka and the tears glistening, inevitably, on Rin’s cheek, as he fell apart, and then got put back together by Makoto’s reassuring hand on his shoulder.

 

_ma-ko-to_

 

And Rin seems to freeze, for a split second. Haruka watches as his fingers thread through his fringe in the mirror, his back stiffens, and one arm stills in midair.

Haruka doesn’t know what to say. He moves towards the exit. “See you, Rin.”

Rin gives the tinest shake of his head. “Who…?” Haruka hears him murmur, quietly, as if reaching for a very distant memory. “Ma… koto…”

Haruka holds his breath, and his heart turns to ice.

The moment passes.

“Later, Haru,” says Rin, raising his hand to wave goodbye at Haru with an easy smile.

 

* * *

 

**_five_ **

 

It’s in the fifth year that Haruka finds himself standing in an empty hospital lobby.

He waits, with a sinking heart. He waits for half an hour. He tries calling a phone number, but there’s no answer. He has a feeling that repeated calls won’t make any difference.

He goes to the reception and says, like he always does, that he’s here to visit Tachibana Makoto, and like she always does, the receptionist takes at least ten confused minutes to look through their system and say that there’s no one of that name here.

Haruka thanks her, and walks into the hospital anyway. He takes the lift to the eighth floor, walks down the corridor to the ward on the end, and enters the room to his left.

“Makoto,” he whispers softly.

Makoto lies on the same bed where he’s slept, unchanged, for five years.

As Haruka walks over to his side, he’s achingly aware that while Makoto doesn’t seem to have aged at all, he, Haruka, has; he’s tipped over the edge of twenty-five, his pro swimming days are definitely coming to a close, and reporters have stopped talking about his _glowing youth_ and moved on to _that powerful energy of a seasoned veteran_ that he apparently gives off, whatever that means.

Although they still go on and on about his eyes, every last one of them.

Haruka sits down beside Makoto and takes his hand. He does so openly, now; he used to be so self-conscious about it, but since Makoto’s apparently faded from everyone’s awareness, there’s nothing to hide anymore.

“I’m here alone this year,” says Haruka, twining his fingers through Makoto’s.

They’d taken him off the life support three years ago, when the doctors started forgetting him. They needed the machines for someone else, saw them standing next to an empty bed, and taken them away, perplexed as to why they were even there in the first place.

Makoto’s father had nearly had a meltdown, and the hospital director had apologised profusely for the inexcusable error, but then the senior doctor had pointed out that Makoto’s vital signs were 100% unchanged from his short time away from the respirator and the feeding tube, and they’d like to observe this a little further to verify if Tachibana Makoto was, against all odds, sustaining himself through this mysterious coma.

And, to the bafflement of all the medical staff in Tokyo, he was.

Haruka squeezes Makoto’s hand tight. His head drops onto his chest as he feels the pulse beneath his fingers, the warmth flowing into his own palm.

Even as he sleeps, Makoto lights up Haruka’s world.

“Your parents moved back to Iwatobi last month,” he says, quietly. “I didn’t want to tell you. In case they suddenly remembered, and came back. But they missed today. They never miss the day itself. They always come. They didn’t come today - ”

Haruka has to stop to breathe in deeply, and let the shudder run its course through his body.

“It’s just you and me now,” he says, as he holds on to Makoto for dear life.

Not even the water is here for them. The water has been silent for five years.

Makoto sleeps.

Makoto sleeps, and Haruka waits.

 

* * *

 

**_seven plus one hundred and thirty_ **

 

With his savings, Haruka buys a place of his own in Tokyo. It’s nice and spacious, for Tokyo, a two-bedroom apartment in the Jiyugaoka neighbourhood. There is a pool not too far away, lots of quaint little cafes, and a boulevard lined in red brick with sakura trees by the sidewalks.

He can’t move back to Iwatobi. It’s what he’d always wanted to do, after retiring from his pro swimming career. To move back with Makoto. To buy a house there, and help Makoto run his own swimming club. They’d talked about it, and they’d smiled and bumped noses as they kissed, over quiet conversations about their future in the safety of their blankets.

But he can’t move back now, not now.

And it’s when Haruka furnishes his apartment, putting the spare bed into the guest bedroom for Rin to stay when he visits, that an idea comes into his head that’s immediately ridiculous but, on second thought, suddenly seems the pinnacle of logic.

His knees buckle, and he has to sit down on the spare bed and stare at the ceiling in bewilderment.

 _Why not?_ he wonders. _What’s stopping me?_

The next day, Haruka walks into Tokyo Medical University Hospital, brazenly takes the first empty wheelchair he sees in a corridor, walks into Makoto’s ward, and, with steady hands, embraces the young man in the bed.

He lifts him up.

He almost drops him.

 _Light_ , thinks Haruka, with a chill running through him that has nothing to do with the oncoming winter. _So light…_

Makoto’s body feels like air in his arms. Like the empty shell that it is.

Haruka is nearly twenty-eight now, and he’s not as strong as he used to be when he was training all day, every day; Rin often prods him in the ribs and says he’s going soft, and challenges him to a race with a glint in his eye and a grin that shows all his teeth.

Haruka usually loses these races, but it doesn’t bother him much anymore.

Haruka knows that he shouldn’t be able to carry Makoto so easily, not like this, but he does, and no one else in the ward seems to pay him any heed as he lifts Makoto into the wheelchair. A girl with her hair in pigtails stares for a second, and does a double-take, but then blinks and turns back at the sound of her grandfather calling her name.

Under the watchful gaze of no one at all, Haruka wheels Makoto out of the hospital, and into his car. He fastens the seatbelt round Makoto, and kisses him on the cheek.

“I’m taking you home,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I made you wait so long.”

 

* * *

 

**_ten plus two hundred and two_ **

 

“She’s cute,” says Haruka, with a smile.

Mariko’s tiny fingers wrap round his. She giggles as she flops to the floor, and her attention is immediately diverted to the swirling blue pattern on Haruka’s carpet, which she studies with an intense scrutiny and focused attention that can’t possibly have come from her father. It must be her mother, thinks Haruka. He hasn’t seen her since the wedding. She is currently in a business meeting and will be coming by only later, to join them for dinner.

“I’ve heard all about your cooking, Haru-san,” she’d said, laughing, over the phone. “I can’t wait to try it.”

It strikes Haruka all over again just much he’s missed of everyone else’s lives, as his continues to revolve around a day ten years and two hundred and two days ago.

Nagisa sits back on his heels. The grin on his face, a perfect reflection of his daughter’s, dissolves into a frown as he glares at Haruka. “You’re the worst, Haru-chan! I can’t believe it’s been eight months since she was born and you never came to visit us even once!”

“I’m sorry,” Haruka says, and he means it from the bottom of his heart, but he doesn’t know how to explain how uneasy he feels about travelling these days, so he leaves it as that.

“Thank you for coming here,” he adds.

Nagisa’s grin softens, and the sunshine in his smile is no less radiant, for all the years that have gone by. It makes Haruka’s chest hurt to see. How many times, in his youth, had that same smile brought him so much comfort, so much quiet reassurance that everything was going to be okay?

_Is everything going to be okay?_

“Haru-chan… have you met anyone yet?”

Haruka blinks. “Huh?”

“Well, we’re all wondering, you know?” asks Nagisa, gently. “You must be lonely here in Tokyo on your own…”

Haruka opens his mouth, then closes it, speechless.

“We’re just worried about you,” says Nagisa.

Haruka looks away. He doesn’t think he can face Nagisa head on right now, like this.

He looks at Hazuki Mariko, tracing patterns in the carpet with a wobbly finger, and stares into the blue, thinking about the silence of the past ten years.

“I’m okay. Don’t worry about me,” he says.

Nagisa bites down on his lower lip, another achingly familiar gesture.

 

* * *

 

**_thirteen_ **

 

Thirteen is the unlucky number of Western culture, Rin had told Haruka once.

Thirteen is the year today, thinks Haruka, and as he draws another line through a tally on the calendar in his second bedroom, he looks at the boy in the bed and thinks that he is breathtaking. He was probably breathtaking the day they met as babies, and had he aged thirteen years along with Haruka, had he gained the faint lines in his brow and round his eyes, he would still make Haruka stop in his tracks every time their eyes met.

Thirteen years later to the day that his life stopped, Nanase Haruka looks at Tachibana Makoto, and thinks, _you are the love of my life_ , in those words.

He presses his lips to Makoto’s, still warm beneath his.

 

* * *

 

**_fifteen plus three hundred_ **

 

“Haruka-san - ”

“Don’t,” says Haruka, balancing the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he walks down the street towards the grocery store.

“I’m sorry, I have to say it - ”

“Don’t, Rei,” says Haruka again, more fiercely this time.

“Nagisa will _kill_ me if I don’t - and anyway, frankly, I agree with him - ”

“Get Emi to restrain Nagisa.”

“Emi-san agrees too. Haruka-san, I don’t understand why you’re doing this to yourself. Why you’ve been doing this to yourself for the last five years! You know no one’s ever going to succeed!”

Haruka walks into the shop and picks up a basket from the front. He examines the fish with a practised eye, phone still wedged to his ear. “That’s not my problem.”

“But logic dictates that it is _impossible_.”

Haruka falls silent.

He listens to Rei’s breathing on the other end as he walks, calmly, placidly, down the aisle towards the vegetables.

“There _is_ no one in the photo with you, Haruka-san,” says Rei. He’s trying to be firm with him, Haruka can tell, but there’s the slightest tremor to his tone, a suppressed emotion that’s threatening to spill out from the careful dam that all of Haruka’s friends have built round him, for years and years.

Haruka picks up a head of lettuce, and puts it into his basket. “Mm-hmm,” he says, barely listening.

“So why do you do it? Why do you show that photo to every single eligible man or woman we set you up with, _on the first date_ , and tell them that unless they can tell you the name of that person, you’ll never date anyone? There’s no one in that photo! It’s just you!”

“Because,” says Haruka, simply, “it’s not just me in that photo.”

He moves through the store, picking up a tub of miso, a pack of konbu and a slab of butter (for baking), while Rei sputters helplessly at the other end of the line.

“But - “

“Sorry, Rei, I have to go, I’m at the cashier.”

Haruka flips his phone shut, and the wallpaper on his screen catches his eye.

It’s a picture of him and the young man in his bed, the one who’s frozen at age twenty and has been sleeping for fifteen years. Haruka knows this because there is a calendar on the wall with the years marked out.

Haruka knows he is incredibly important, and he knows that because of him, he can never be with anyone else. He is waiting for this man to wake. He is waiting for this man to come back to him. 

But Haruka can’t remember his name, right this moment.

He pays for his groceries quickly and runs all the way home, heart pounding in his chest. He’s never been a fast runner. He’s only slowed down over the years, as age has caught up with him, though his job as a chef in the cafe on the corner keeps him on his toes.

He still swims sometimes, and the water is still, mysteriously, silent.

He’s forgotten the sound of its voice, the way it used to ripple in his ear.

He opens the door to his flat with trembling fingers, drops his grocery bags in the hallway, and runs into the spare room where the young man with olive brown hair sleeps. Haruka has never once seen him open his eyes, but he knows they are the most gentle shade of grass green, the colour of spring. He knows this from the photographs he keeps with him everywhere. In his wallet. On his shelf. On his phone.

He picks up the printed piece of paper by the bedside table, and reads it.

 _From: Tachibana Makoto_ , it begins.

Everything flows back into Haruka's mind. His knees give way, and he crumples onto the floor, leaning back on the bed.

The quiet breathing from the boy behind him fills the room.

 

* * *

 

**_twenty_ **

 

_From: Tachibana Makoto_  
_Subject: (no subject)  
_ _Sent: Tuesday, 10:00 AM_

 

The date on this printed email is exactly twenty years ago, to the day. The ink is starting to fade from the paper.

Haruka copies it out by hand, the better to etch it into his memory. He’ll go to work early the next day and use the photocopier in the cafe’s office to make a hundred copies of this when no one’s looking.

He can’t lose this.

 

_Dear Haru,_

_If you’re reading this, it means I’ve gone somewhere._

_I wish I could tell you where I’ve gone. But the truth is, I don’t even know myself._

_What I’ve realised, though, is that I can’t ever really teach the water about love, the way things are now. I’ll never be able to pay my debt in full. Because the way things are, the way it’s learning, in bits and pieces here and there, just isn’t really what love is, is it?_

_I’m afraid, Haru. I’m scared. I don’t mind admitting it to you, because you’re the one person who’s always known that I’m really a big scaredy-cat, and loved me for it anyway._

_I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know that I have to make a move of my own before this goes any further. Kiyoshi-san has been suffering for such a long time._

_Love is everything. So I’m going to go to the water, and offer it everything._

_If you’re reading this, please don’t be angry. Please don’t do anything drastic. Please trust me. I know I can do this. I know I can do this because with you, Haru, I’ve been blessed to have love in my life since the day I was born._

_It hardly seems fair for me to keep that all to myself, does it?_

_So trust me. I’ll show the water everything about love, and then I’ll come back to you._

_I love you._

_Makoto_

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... here's your answer, to everyone who asked what happened to Makoto's physical presence while his consciousness merged with the water.
> 
> I'm sorry this chapter was so long, please drown me. 
> 
> Thank you for reading ;__;


	13. odysseus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Makoto takes a long journey.

_"I have a question."_  

**_...do you?_**

_“Yeah. I’ve been wondering about it for a while now, actually… but you refused to answer me, once, before.”_

**_is that so  
_** **_why do you bring it up again, then_ **

_“Because I want to know.”_

 

* * *

 

Makoto is burning up.

He whips back reflexively, a startled _splash_ of frenzied blue in the maelstrom that rages all around him.

“What _is_ that?”

The question snaps forth from his mind unbidden, before he can even think about it. He feels something rough brush past his face.

**_the fiery one_ **

Makoto breathes, hot water sliding down the back of his throat.

“…Rin."

The water’s silence speaks volumes.

Makoto doesn’t need to open his eyes. He knows exactly where he is without looking. He is in a pool, they are in their second year of high school all over again and his past self is watching from the stands with chills running down his skin, Nagisa next to him in open-mouthed awe.

He’d always wondered if the water spoke to Rin too. He’d asked Haru about it once. Haru had thought about it briefly, and shook his head.

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not? Rin loves swimming just as much as you, Haru.”

“Rin loves swimming… but not the water. He burns.”

“He _burns_?”

“Mmmm. That’s what the water said.”

“What does that mean?”

They’d been hanging out in Makoto’s living room. Makoto had dusted off his Wii for a brief, increasingly rare study break, but they’d both been too exhausted from cramming sports nutrition to really concentrate on Mario Kart, and wound up both sprawled on the floor, controllers tossed on the rug, staring blankly up at the ceiling fan.

Haru had taken a long time to answer. Makoto hadn’t minded. He liked these pockets of silence.

He reached out without looking and twined Haru’s fingers in his, one by one; Haru returned the gesture absently, touching his fingertips to Makoto’s.

“The water and I accept each other. We share the space. Rin just… bursts through it.”

That sounded like Rin, Makoto thought. “Rin hates water?"

“He doesn’t hate it,” said Haru. “But he doesn’t accept it. He fights, in his own way. To go faster. So that the water doesn’t defeat him.”

And here, now, suspended in a ring of white foam that feels like it’s choking the life out of him while, simultaneously, _pushing_ him, _pushing_ him to be more and greater and mightier, Makoto finally understands what the water means. Haru had tried to explain. The reality is so much more. It is impossible.

It should be impossible to feel like this in water. It should be impossible for fire to exist in this space.

Matsuoka Rin has always been impossible.

Makoto reaches for Haru, and finds, not cool, calm blue but a heartbeat that pulses through his veins. He finds it in the lane next to Rin. He tries to open one eye. It stings.

_Haru. Haru._

He lets himself be carried by the movement of the waves, lets himself ride on the push and the pull, the frenetic, frantic charge that brings them, inexorably, towards the end. Makoto knows what will happen. He can’t help but watch anyway, through his mind’s eye; he can’t help but _feel_. If Rin is fire, Haru, next to him, is deep, deep water. Haru does not burn. Haru does not chill. Haru is the depths of the ocean, dark and forceful, unknowable, and yet -

“Haru,” he whispers, surging alongside that lean, lithe body.

He is drawn in, closer and closer, overwhelmed by Haru next to him. He can’t move away, even with the fiery sensation of Rin all around, pricking his skin.

**_this feeling…_ **

Makoto can’t answer. He has nothing left to say.

Neither does the water. It falls silent, and Makoto can feel its confusion, its roiling uncertainty; he can feel his toes curl and uncurl one by one as his consciousness spreads and he stretches out, in that space between Haru and Rin, _reaching_ for the wall along with them.

Rin gets there first.

Haru’s heartbeat slows, gradually, as the waters around him come to a light ripple and a standstill.

The burning is gone. Makoto finally opens his eyes.

Haru is standing in the pool, looking up, and Rin is standing above him. He is blurry. His figure keeps shifting, like a restless whirlwind; Makoto _feels_ him better than he sees him, feels the heat still radiating into the surface of the water through Rin’s feet at the pool’s edge, feels the smirk on his face and the look of triumph in his eyes.

“I’ll never swim with you again,” says Rin.

And a storm breaks loose.

Haru comes undone.

It hits Makoto like a tidal wave, even as Haru’s body turns to ice. Pinpricks of brilliant light flash in his vision, then vanish all at once, till only darkness is left; and Haru doesn’t explode with a bang like thunder but crumbles like the rain, pounding down onto a pavement in fierce little droplets.

Pieces of himself falling, falling.

 

* * *

 

 _“I want to know the answer, and only you can give it to me.”_  

 **_ask your question, then_**    
**_ask your question, tachibana makoto_**  

_“Okay. Well. It’s this.”_

 

* * *

 

When Makoto opens his eyes, he is somewhere unknown again. It feels like the sky. He feels light, airy, weightless; he is floating on the wind.

He does not know where he is, or when he is; perhaps he is nowhere and no _when_ , for now. Perhaps he is still lost at sea. Perhaps he is still in pieces.

“Haru,” he says, out loud.

His own voice sounds very soft, yet it reverberates in the emptiness all around him, bouncing off atoms of water and back to his ears like a rippling whisper.

The water listens, waits.

Makoto remembers Haru’s words, quiet and plaintive, spoken with a yearning ache at a festival a few nights after. He remembers Haru saying _when I lost to him, everything went dark._

He remembers this well, and the way those blue eyes wavered, like the surface of the ocean.

He remembers, but he’s never _known_.

“It was really hard for Haru,” says Makoto, more to himself than to the water, even though he knows it’s always there; it’s all around him, biding its time.

And Makoto says this with all the old frustration at _himself_ for not being able to help Haru, at that time, not being able to understand everything he was feeling, not being able, _never being able_ , to comprehend what passes between Haru and Rin in that world they share. But Makoto learned a long time ago that perhaps it’s for the best he isn’t part of that world. It’s for the best that he is, for Haru, not the sea and the storm but the home port, the steady rock on land.

And Makoto lets out a soft sigh between his lips.

He floats, staring up at the sky above him, feeling the sky below him.

And Makoto says this also with a growing wonder, at the sense that there is so much, so much that Haru has borne through the years. That there are things you’ll always carry on your own, no matter what, and perhaps that is the nature of growing up, that is the nature of life.

**_i could take it from him_ **

Makoto breathes in deep. He thinks of the darkness around Haru in that moment. It’s already fading from Makoto; it’s not his memory, after all, but he wrenches himself back quickly anyway before he finds his consciousness there again, reliving the moment along with Haru and Rin. He doesn’t think he can bear it.

But he knows that one of them will have to, and one of them will have to carry the scars for years.

“No,” he says.

The water ripples, lightly, atop his chest and into his arms. His fingertips tingle.

The water says nothing, but Makoto can feel the inquiring push in his mind.

 _why,_ it asks. Not accusing, but curious, ever curious. There is a contradiction here, says the water. There is pain, and there is darkness, and Makoto is, once again, denying Haru the light.

“Haru doesn’t know it yet, but…”

Makoto pauses. His heart starts to splinter, a little.

“Haru doesn’t know it, but he needs that feeling, you know? I think, without it, he would never have realised… he would never have realised how much he loves Rin.”

And the crack in Makoto’s heart opens wide, and what pours forth is not jealousy, as he once described to Nagisa, but instead a pure, overflowing wellspring of something that’s like the sky all around him, like everything that’s clear and bright. Not a cloud, not a shadow.

When he speaks again, the words come easily from the fissure inside his chest.

“He would never have realised how much he loves all his friends, without that feeling.”

 **_that feeling  
_ ** **_is it loss_ **

Time expands, contracts, flows.

Makoto stretches an arm out towards the sun.

He does not blink. The light is searing, direct, but it does not blind him. He gazes into dead centre, and he feels the water tremble, take a quivering breath.

He is reaching for the truth. He is close.

“Is it?” he asks. “I wonder.”

 

* * *

 

_“What was the deal you made with Haru, back then?”_

 

* * *

 

Here, there is no control, Makoto quickly learns, and he learns, too, to let go.

It’s not easy.

It’s not for nothing that Makoto is a captain, a teacher, and a big brother; Makoto holds so much in his hands, and he does so carefully, tenderly, but always with that gentle prod and guiding touch, always with the sense of where things are going.

As the years went by, Makoto learned that it couldn’t always be like this.

He cannot always hold on. He cannot always be the one in charge, and there’s nowhere he feels it more than here and now, in this eternal space with the water. There is much of it, so much. There is so little of him. Words, uttered, not lightly but with blind faith, come back to the forefront of his mind now and then.

I’ll give you everything, he’d said.

 _I’ll give you everything_ , not knowing what it really meant.

He still doesn’t know. But, perhaps, there are no answers here, only the constant search for them, and, in the search, learning that you don’t always _need_ to look so hard.

_Because love is everything._

So he _reaches out_ , draws back, lets the tide fall where it will, and where it will is the odyssey of where his love brings him, throughout his twenty years of life.

 

* * *

 

Makoto is a child again, taking the twins to the pool for the first time and watching them paddle and splash each other, listening to their laughter. He steps into the shallow end of the children’s pool with them, kicks his own feet up through the water in a rough, tumbling arc, and promptly falls over over his own clumsiness. The twins headbutt him in a synchronised tackle. He lets them, with a laugh.

 

**x**

 

Makoto is in Iwatobi SC and he’s trying to hide, trying to flee from this cold, cold flame; this is not the blazing heat and the rage of infinite memories ago but the broken desperation of a flickering candle, and there is nowhere to go. Makoto watches with a choked cry as a younger Haru hoists himself out of the pool, and Rin remains where he is. There are tears running down his cheeks. His shoulders are heaving with ragged gasps of air, so hard that the vibrations shake the water.

And Makoto watches it all, watches from the blurry depths of his childhood haven, the place where he discovered the sky, lying on his back, and he weeps, too, for the loss of innocence and the shattered pieces of dreams that drift down into the pool like so much forgotten debris.

 

**x**

 

Makoto is five years old. The Nanases have asked his parents if they want to join them for a trip to the beach. Haru really loves the sea. Makoto really loves watching Haru in the sea.

 

**x**

 

Makoto looks up into a sky full of stars.

The constellations are stunning, and he hears a light, high voice from above him, asking about the _rockhopper penguin constellation_ , and he smiles, all the stars in his heart lighting up one by one.

 

**x**

 

Makoto is trapped in the dark, and no matter how much he thrashes about, how much he bangs his fists against the walls that press in from all four corners, he cannot see, he cannot breathe, and Haru’s legs are slowly descending as his feet reach for the floor, as his body strains to stand upright under the weight of the world on his frail shoulders.

All around him, the race goes on.

All around him, the air grows thin, and hairline fractures shatter Makoto’s vision.

He cannot breathe.

The darkness is closing in. 

 

**x**

 

Makoto is not yet one year old, not like Haru, who has crossed that magical threshold into the first complete year of life. They are sharing a pool, a small rubber ring in the backyard of the Nanase household. It is summer.

Makoto listens as the water whispers to Nanase Haruka for the first time.

 

* * *

 

_“I heard him by the water, with the lanterns, on the night of Obon. I heard him say… teach me about loss, you said.”_

**_indeed  
_** **_there are no more secrets from you, tachibana makoto_ **

_“So that was the deal, then. You asked Haru to teach you about loss. When you let him save me, from the ocean.”_

**_yes_**

_“Then… how did you end up taking him away, that time? Why?”_

 

* * *

 

Twenty years isn’t much. It goes by faster than the blink of an eye, in the span that is two billion years. But it is all of Makoto, and it seems to stretch on forever, for you cannot put a beginning and end to something so infinitesmal, yet so vast, as a human life.

He travels twenty years with a single step. He travels the space of a single moment with a thousand. He hangs in the balance, in the silences between seconds of human time. He flows from memory to memory, and somewhere along the way he loses track of whether they are  _his_ , the water’s, or someone else’s altogether. Everything is one.

He is boundless, limitless.

And when the water asks if he would change Haru’s fate, if he would take away his suffering, Makoto’s answer is always the same.

His cracked heart does not glue itself back together. It stays open, open and raw and exposed, and Makoto knows he is stronger for it, knows that if the water could look into its depths, it  _would_  learn what love is once and for all.

 

* * *

 

_Love is the sum total of all your feelings._

_Love is everything you’ve ever asked about, everything and anything you’ve ever asked someone to teach you. Love is loss. Love is fear. Love is desperation._

_Love is hope._

_Love is humanity._

 

* * *

 

_“Why did you take him?”_

And in answer to Makoto’s latest question, the water sounds almost amused as it bubbles mirthfully in his ears.

**_because of you_ **

Makoto, lips slightly parted to draw breath, feels all the air rush out of him.

“What?” he asks.

 **_at every turn, you have asked me not to take nanase haruka’s loss from him  
_ ** **_have you not?_ **

“Yes, but that - that’s not - ”

Makoto sputters, and trails off into stunned silence.

 _That’s not possible,_  he wants to say, but the words die on his tongue, along with any delusion that he knows what  _possible_  means anymore; he feels himself dissipate into sharp little shards of midnight blue, strewn about in pieces across the length of time and space.

“That’s not what I wanted,” he finishes, lamely.

 **_since i could not claim his debt that way  
_ ** **_i claimed it, tachibana makoto, through you_ **

 

* * *

 

And with a  _jolt_ ,

Makoto feels everything come full circle.

 

* * *

 

He takes a deep breath.

“There’s something else I need to know, too.”

**_…ask your questions._ **

Makoto pauses, and steels himself. He doesn’t even know how to phrase his question, really; it seems pointless in the face of the eternity that he currently inhabits, and it seems so unreal, and he is, in part, afraid of what he will hear.

But he has a promise to keep.

 

 _So trust me.  
_ _I’ll come back to you._

 

“How long have I been here?” he asks. ”What’s happening, back in Tokyo? With Haru, and everyone."

And as he speaks, he realises that in all his travels, he never once ventured into his own future. It’s as if he’s been frozen in time. Perhaps he has.

The water doesn’t answer, not in words, and not immediately. But it  _reacts_ , and -

Makoto feels a shudder from the inside out, shaking him to the very core of his being.

For once, he’s not the one thrashing through the water, for once, he is lying very still while all around him, the water seems to struggle. He feels it trying to  _push_ , with an effort, beyond the consciousness of Makoto’s twenty years of life, beyond the limits of their shared existence right now. Light blue fades into dark, almost ink-black, into the shadows of the ocean’s deep, and Makoto can feel the strain of its reaching, the vague, uncanny sense of a yawning chasm on the other side of an impenetrable veil.

He feels - nothing.

He hears nothing, sees nothing.

“Hello?” he says out loud, like an idiot, he thinks, just to hear the sound of his voice, just to stop himself from freaking out in the suddenly silent world that he’s been plunged into.

**_…_ **

The water does not speak, but Makoto feels its presence, its wordless contemplation.

“Do I even exist?” he asks, quietly. “In my time? After I - that night, at the pool, when I - ”

**_i do not know_ **

The uncertainty in that statement is deafening. It unnerves Makoto more than anything else, hearing the water, in all its omniscience, admit to  _not knowing_ , with that rippling tremor in its voice.

“You… don’t know?”

**_i do not know_ **

A beat passes, a pause brimming with possibilities and negations.

**_there is nothing there_ **

There’s an edge, a hesitation in the words; the tide is coming in, and Makoto senses that there’s a little bit more he isn’t being told. He bides his time. He waits another eternity for the water to continue.

 **_not just for you, tachibana makoto  
_ ** **_but for me_ **

“Huh?” Makoto blurts out, dumbly. “What do you mean?”

**_i do not know_ **

Makoto feels his skin pricking, feels a cool, chilly sensation brush over every inch of his body.

“But you’re  _water_. You can’t die. You’re… you’re everywhere. You’re life.”

Makoto is dimly aware that he’s starting to babble now, he is fighting a welling sense of panic and there’s no way that he can make any sense of this; and yes, maybe this is one of those things that just  _doesn’t_  make any sense, but - if even the water itself doesn’t understand -

 **_it would seem so  
_ ** **_however -_ **

The ghostly ripple around him goes silent, with an abruptness that’s as sudden as it is hushed and fragile.

 _Well_ , thinks Makoto.  _Well, okay._

“That won’t work,” he says, firmly.

The water ignores his protest, continues to simmer as it draws inward into the conundrum of its own silence.

“I have to get back to Haru somehow, in the end. No matter how long it takes.”

 **_but there is nothing there, tachibana makoto  
_ ** **_for either of us_ **

“That won’t work, then,” says Makoto again.

Because he hasn’t given everything up just to  _lose it_  now, oh no; he’s given everything up, so that he can hold it closer.

 

* * *

 

Haru has just turned nineteen, and it is not too long after his birthday that Makoto decides the time has come for them to talk.

They’re at a pool (of course), not Haru’s university pool or the one at Makoto’s club, just an ordinary public pool in the middle of a quiet residential neighbourhood in Tokyo. Since moving here, Haru’s made it an ongoing quest to try out all the pools in the city, because, as he explains very solemnly to Makoto, the water always feels  _different_  in each of them, and he needs to find the pool which feels the best to him.

Makoto sets aside time for these trips, and Haru sets aside time for when he knows Makoto can make it. They never speak about this. It goes unspoken between them, like so much else, quietly acknowledged and appreciated.

But today, the time has come for them to talk, thinks Makoto, as he sits by the edge of the pool with his legs dangling in the water, because there are times for silence, and there are times for words.

He’d learned that, one year ago. They both had.

He does not reach for Haru’s hand, not today. He smiles at Haru instead as he comes swimming up to the poolside, and hoists himself out to sit beside Makoto. Makoto notes the careful distance between them, just close enough to be  _close_ , just far enough so that any bumping, or  _accidental touching_ , certainly wouldn’t be accidental at all.

“Good swim?” he asks.

Haru shakes the water off his hair, and tilts his head back, staring contemplatively out at the width of the pool. “Mmm. Not too bad. The water feels friendlier here.”

It’s such a  _Haru_  thing to say, and Makoto laughs. “I’m glad. We can come again.”

Haru casts him a sidelong glance. He doesn’t say anything, but Makoto reads the look with ease anyway.  _You don’t always have to come with me,_  it says.  _I’ll understand if you’re busy._

“I want to,” says Makoto.

His gaze flickers out towards the pool. It’s late, almost closing time. Only a few lone swimmers remain. The fact that Haru is here, sitting by his side, instead of spending every last remaining second in the water, gives Makoto the last bit of courage he needs.

He lets out a small, hopeful sigh. “You know, Haru, now that we’re not neighbours and we don’t go to the same school, or the same swimming club, I feel like… all our time together is really special.”

Haru pauses for the slightest moment before he speaks. When he does, his voice is lower, softer, even more so than usual. “Not like it wasn’t before.”

“Yeah.” Makoto laughs again, feeling his heart soar. “But I guess, I’m just saying, I’ll never  _not_  want to spend time with you, you know? I love you, Haru.”

He says it lightly, easily, and as he turns to look at Haru with a smile on his face, he sees those blue eyes widen and blink, he sees Haru’s lips part slightly in surprise. But it’s not the surprise of learning something new. This is not a confession, thinks Makoto, because really, he’s just saying what they both already know, and they both know it.

It’s the surprise of hearing something like this spoken aloud for once in their relationship, for once in their lives, and it fades quickly into a gentle smile.

“What are you talking about?” Haru murmurs, but he inches in closer, and their shoulders brush.

 

* * *

 

_“Somehow, I knew I’d end up here, after all our travels. _”__

**_it feels… warm_**

_“Mmm. It does, doesn’t it.”_

**_nanase haruka feels different_ **

**_this feeling  
_ ** **_is it love_**  

_“Is it? I wonder… You know, I think I’ve finally figured it out, why it’s always been so hard for you to understand. Why all your years with Kiyoshi-san weren’t enough to learn.”_

**_…why_**

_“Because love isn’t just one feeling. It’s what you get, at the end of all feelings. When you’ve experienced loss. Fear. Pain…”_

_“Love isn’t a feeling. Love is the core of what it means. To be human.”_

**_to be_**   ** _human…_**

_“And once you’ve learned that, you can’t go back. A little bit of you is always going to be human now.”_

 

* * *

 

_the beginning, the end and the middle_

 

* * *

 

Makoto moves through the water, slowly, unhurriedly. He has all the time in the world now.

He feels the water contract round his ankles, feels it reaching, tentative and nebulous. He feels it shrink in on itself. There are a hundred questions, and no answers.

He laughs gently.

“Maybe that’s why you always felt like Rin burns,” he says. “Out of all of us, it was always Rin who loved the fiercest, and the hardest…”

A tremor runs through him, just beneath his skin. The water trembles.

**_i…_ **

It starts, then stops, fragile and fearful.

Makoto closes his eyes. The crack in his heart finally, finally splits open, fully.

He lets the warmth within flow out, sends it radiating through every part of him, offers what scant comfort he can that it’s okay, it’s terrifying, yes, to be human, even a little bit - but it’s okay, because it is also the most wondrous thing imaginable.

 _it’s okay  
_ _it’ll be okay_

They share this space for forever and a breath more. They share the safety of a mutual uncertainty, reassurance, and faith, blind, hopeful, beautiful faith.

Makoto, with his eyes still closed, wraps his arms around himself and exhales lightly into the deep blue.

**_what will you do now, tachibana makoto_ **

“I can’t go back, can I?” Makoto says. “Not to where I came from, anyway. There’s nothing there, you said.”

**_nothing…_ **

The water’s answering echo resounds quietly in the darkness.

“But I can go anywhere. I can go -  _anywhen_.”

 **_yes  
_ ** **_you could, if you wished_ **

Makoto hugs himself tighter.

“Take me back to the start,” he whispers.

 

* * *

 

And somewhere in Iwatobi, Tachibana Makoto opens his eyes, and looks up at the sky.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. This was a big chapter. Not in the length (not so much as some others, anyway), but... yeah, a lot going on here. Threads coming together, questions answered, hopefully.
> 
> I have two more chapters planned, probably one full one to wrap up and then a shorter epilogue. Yes, it's finally coming to a close! THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH for the outpouring (ha, look at my watery pun) of encouragement for this fic, it has been a wild ride for me and I really hope the ending doesn't disappoint ;__; much love to you all.
> 
> (you can always come talk to me on social media, I'm a real spaz but I promise I'm friendly)


	14. we were here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Makoto dreams, wakes, and dreams again.

“Makoto.”

“Yes, Haru-chan?”

Makoto and Haruka are five years old. They have gone to the beach for the day, with their parents. They are building a sandcastle together. Haruka decorates the turrets with little seashells, and Makoto pats the foundations into place as carefully as he can. His hands are not as skilled as Haru-chan’s.

Haruka’s gaze drifts up and out, over the glimmering blue-green sheen of the ocean. “Let’s swim.”

His voice sounds so far away, like it’s already floating on the tide.

“Okay,” says Makoto. He puts down his shovel and bucket.

They are not allowed to go out on their own, so Haruka goes up to his mother and tugs her on the sleeve, solemnly announcing his intentions, and she laughs and takes the boys’ hands in her own, Haruka on her left, Makoto on her right.

“Be careful, Makoto!” his mother calls.

Makoto takes wobbly steps through the shifting sands, into the water. It is cool and refreshing in this summer heat. The tide sloshes in and out. Little pools form around his ankles.

He looks up.

Haruka is already waist-deep. It is as far as they are allowed to go. They are still very small, though Haruka is taller than Makoto and much more sure of himself in the water. Makoto watches as Haruka’s arms stretch out, and with one graceful movement, he slides easily into the embrace of the ocean.

Haruka’s mother looks at Makoto. She follows his wide-eyed gaze, and smiles.

“Haruka loves the sea so much,” she says.

Makoto opens his mouth to answer, but he has nothing to say, so he closes it. He can’t take his eyes off Haruka. He feels like the sound of his breathing might disrupt the water, might interrupt Haru-chan and break this spell.

Haruka is blurry beneath the waves. He glides away, turns and comes back towards Makoto. His head pops up, just enough for his lips to take in air.

“Makoto.”

“Yes, Haru-chan?”

“Come and swim.”

And Haruka holds out his hand.

Makoto takes it.

 

* * *

 

It is not the first time they hold hands.

The first time they hold hands, Makoto is two weeks old, and Haruka is five months. The Nanases have come over to visit their neighbours and their newborn son.

The moment is frozen in time in a photograph, tucked away on the third page of an old album at the bottom of the Tachibanas’ bookshelf. In the picture, Haruka is in his mother’s arms, staring down at Makoto for the first time, and he is reaching out, touching a fingertip to the peacefully sleeping baby on the bed.

One of Makoto’s little hands is curled around Haruka’s finger, and there is the tiniest smile on his lips.

They do not remember this. But that afternoon, on the beach, when Makoto takes Haruka’s hand for the first time that he remembers, the sense of familiarity that washes over him is like coming home.

 

* * *

 

It is a cool day in late March. The dewdrops glisten on blades of green grass, bright and clean.

They are on the swings in the playground. Makoto kicks off the ground, and launches himself up, up into the air, into the spring sky.

It’s funny, he thinks, gazing at a passing cloud and the birds overhead. Sometimes, he has this strange feeling - this strange feeling, looking at the sky, that this is a sight he’s seen before.

Well, of course he’s seen it before. It’s the _sky_ , after all.

But when he throws his head back, blinks, and opens his eyes again, and looks up, he is struck by that old, well-worn sense of _déjà vu_ , that sense that, perhaps, he was born with this vision of clear blue and white seared into his mind, behind his eyelids. That if he reached out, he could touch something that he has known and felt for many years, many more years than he has actually lived.

Makoto swings back down, up the other way, looking down at the dewy grass. Next to him, Haruka is swaying gently, slowly, in his swing. Haruka doesn’t swing like Makoto does. He doesn’t kick off with all his might, as hard as he can. He lets the wind take him where it will. He lets himself flow.

Makoto looks at Haruka, and thinks of how he moves in the water, like he belongs there. He wonders…

“Hey, Haru-chan?”

Haruka glances over at him. “Yeah?”

“You really love swimming, don’t you?”

The tips of Haruka’s sneakers touch the ground as his swing glides downwards. The grass rustles.

“Hmm.” Haruka hums under his breath.

Makoto’s swing flies upwards again. He stretches his legs out in front of him, as high as they will go. He soars.

“When you swim, Haru-chan, do you ever feel like the water is alive?”

“Alive?”

Haruka’s voice, usually so soft in its quiet intensity, sounds even more distant than usual from up in the air.

“Like it’s watching you,” says Makoto.

“Maybe. Sometimes,” says Haruka, after a long pause. “Yeah… something like that, I guess.”

Makoto laughs, a little self-conscious, and lets the wind carry his small chuckle away. “Sorry, Haru-chan, I said something really weird.”

Haruka shakes his head. He doesn’t say anything as he swings himself upwards, meets Makoto halfway as Makoto’s coming back down to earth. Makoto’s gaze flickers to the side, in that moment that they pass each other, and he catches a flash of startling blue as Haruka glances over at him too.

Haruka doesn’t have to say anything, not in words.

 

* * *

 

This is Iwatobi.

It is a small town on the Western coast of Japan, in Tottori Prefecture. The population is 12,800. Its main industry is squid fishing, and when you stand on the beach and gaze out at the gently rolling waves, you are looking into the Sea of Japan.

There are mountains in the distance. They are green in spring, golden-brown in autumn, and white in the winter. The banks of the Shiwagawa are lined with poplars.

This is Iwatobi, and Tachibana Makoto grows up here, halfway up a mountain, in the shadow of the Misagozaki Shrine. He grows up with a view of the fishing harbour. Every morning, when he leaves his house for the day, the sunlight sparkles on the distant ocean surface, and he sees the boats floating out on the water.

On the other side of the stone steps lives a boy with blue eyes.

Makoto has known him all his life.

This is Iwatobi.

This is their home.

 

* * *

 

Of course they are in the same class in elementary school.

 _Of course._ Makoto had never even thought there would be any other reality, for them.

They walk home from school together, and when they are older, Haruka gets a bicycle for his ninth birthday and rides it up and down the pavement by the harbour until he learns to balance on two wheels.

He teaches Makoto after school. Makoto falls off a lot, because he is always trying to pedal too hard, says Haruka, he grips the handlebars with too much force, and his palms get sweaty and nervous.

He teaches Makoto anyway, and when Makoto’s birthday comes around four and a half months later, it is his turn to get a bicycle, so that they can cycle around together.

There are not that many places to explore, in their little port town. Mostly, they cycle from home to the swimming club and back, three times a week, and Makoto learns all the bumps and uneven surfaces of the path that leads over Mutsukibashi, with the river running below them.

Sometimes, they cycle out of town past the station and the fields of barley that sway, tall and proud, in the countryside breeze.

Sometimes, in the late autumn when it’s too cold to swim in the ocean, they go back to the seaside, and Haruka is always careful to cycle right beside Makoto.

Not in front. Not behind. Next to him, matching his feet stroke for stroke with every turn of the wheels.

Makoto chatters easily as they keep pace with each other, telling Haruka about Ran’s latest playground crush, the book he’s just finished reading, and his first trip to the optician’s.

Haruka listens, and when they round a bend and Makoto pulls slightly ahead, he puts on an extra burst of speed and takes up his natural place once again, in between Makoto and the crashing ocean waves.

They ride on into the sunset.

They have all the time in the world.

 

* * *

 

And Makoto never tells Haruka why he asked him that question, that afternoon on the swings in the playground, so many years ago.

Makoto dreams.

Makoto has been dreaming, for as long as he can remember.

It is why the dark unnerves him so, and why, after that day, he has learned to be afraid of the water; it’s not _just_ the thought of the drowned fishermen on that boat, but the thought that his dreams might be real.

_The water is alive._

_Haru, do you have these dreams too?_

Makoto dreams of being suspended in the water, dreams that it is stirring all around him. He dreams that there is something at the bottom of the sea that breathes, that reaches out and whispers to him. It knows his name. He hears it, soft and close to his ear like an intimate whisper; he hears it, echoing all around him.

**_tachibana makoto…_ **

He feels like it is a voice he has heard before.

When he wakes, sometimes to the light of morning, sometimes to the damp, sweaty darkness of 3:12 am with his fist clutching his sheets, he cannot remember the voice any more. It fades from his mind like the tide ebbing away, leaving only wet footprints where he’s been running, running as fast as he can. He cannot remember that voice, what it is or what it sounds like, and when he tries to listen for it in the water sometimes, there is never anything. The water is calm, silent as the still of night when Makoto plunges into its world. And Makoto thinks, _silly, it’s just a dream_ , and he tries to smile and embrace the water like Haru, because he can’t help feeling like maybe he would find something there. Maybe he would learn to love it the same way that Haru does.

Yet, like the night, Makoto feels the water watching, waiting; like in the darkest moments before dawn, he feels it coiled and brimming with something that’s ready to spring. When he swims with Haru, he feels it quickening into - well, into _life_ …

 

* * *

 

In the last year of elementary school, their class plants a flower garden at the foot of a sakura tree in the school courtyard. They spend an afternoon making sturdy red bricks, one for each of them, and Makoto has to think of something to write on his.

He is older now. He is careful and deliberate with his words. There is a lot he could say, but a brick is only so small, and in the end, Makoto, too, can’t help feeling like he is only so small of a person, no matter how big and awkward he is getting in his body.

He raises his white chalk to the brick and hesitates, then spells out two words in English.

_I Swim._

As the letters form beneath his fingers, his hand grows steadier, and he finishes off the stroke of the _m_ with a firm, determined straight line. There are no flourishes in his writing. It is simple, a child’s stroke still, but strong and well-formed. He will paint over the chalk outline later, and his words will stay on this brick in their garden for years to come, long after Makoto and Haruka and Rin have grown up and moved on.

He makes a capital _S_ on the _swim_.

“What did you write on your brick, Haru?” he asks, the next day. It is a Saturday, slow and leisurely, and they are studying in Makoto’s living room because he has to help watch the twins, who have finally quietened down enough for a nap on the cushions in the corner.

Outside, the trees are still bare. But there is a wind in the air that smells like spring, like grass and longer days. They will be in junior high soon.

Haruka’s gaze flicks upwards at Makoto.

“ _Free_ ,” he says.

Makoto laughs warmly. “That’s so like you, Haru.”

“What about you?”

Makoto tells him.

A fleeting expression of surprise crosses Haruka’s face. His eyes widen, ever so slightly.

 _Why?_ Makoto hears, unsaid.

_Why do you swim?_

“You know, Haru,” says Makoto, “the first time I practised the backstroke seriously, to prepare for the relay… I opened my eyes, and I looked up. And I saw the sky.”

He glances out of the window, almost by reflex. It is a crisp, blue, cloudless sky that greets him today. Across the table, he feels Haruka’s calm gaze on him.

_I Swim_

_I swim, to find that part of myself_

_I swim to see the sky_

“Being able to see the sky when I swim… it feels like I have nothing to be afraid of.”

Because the sky was there behind his eyelids, from the moment before he opened them; because he was born with a vision of pale blue and cirrus clouds that streaked the sky white. Because there’s something telling him _it’s okay_. It’s almost an insistent whisper in his ears; it almost sounds like his own voice, only deeper, more distant, somehow.

“You don’t.”

Makoto stirs out of his reverie at the sound of Haruka’s voice. He turns back.

Haruka is twirling his pencil absently, in one hand, the way he does when there is something on his mind. His fingers come to a sudden stop as Makoto’s gaze meets his. The tip of the pencil slides across the margins of his paper, making a faint line.

“Have anything. To be afraid of,” says Haruka.

Makoto smiles. He thinks of how it feels in the water, with Haru next to him. He thinks of Haru diving into the pool, shining brighter than any star in the night sky.

“Mmm. I know,” he says.

_I Swim_

_because_

_it’s meaningless without you_

 

* * *

 

It is a on hot summer day, many seasons later, when Tachibana Makoto has grown up a little more, that he finds himself at the Iwatobi train station with the red-haired hurricane of their lives, Matsuoka Rin. It is 4:05pm.

The sun has been beating down on them all day. His shirt sticks to his skin. They sit side by side on a brown painted bench, with the chirp of cicadas filling the air. They are the only people at the station on this long, slow, languid afternoon at the height of summer vacation, when the very air around them is lying supine in the heat, too lazy to stir itself into a even a light breeze.

Makoto gets up and buys two cold drinks from the vending machine. He tosses a Pocari Sweat to Rin, who catches it out of the air one-handed, barely moving.

“Hey, Makoto…”

Makoto pops the cap on his iced tea, and glances over. Rin is staring out into space, his head tilted back.

“Remember when we first met?”

“In elementary school, you mean?” asks Makoto. “That day you transferred into our class?”

Rin shakes his head. “No. Earlier.”

“Oh, that swimming competition?”

“No, even before that. That day, at the harbour.”

Makoto’s hand slips. The can in his hand nearly clatters to the ground. His fingers tighten, at first to catch it, then they tense, clenching so hard a dent starts to form in the metal.

“The day your father…” Makoto says, voice dropping low.

Rin nods. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Makoto echoes. “I remember. I was there with Haru. And we saw you and Gou-chan.”

“Crazy, huh?” says Rin. He takes a long gulp of his Pocari Sweat. “I mean, I always wondered about it, you know? After that day. I always wondered what two kids were doing there. Before I met you guys again, I wondered if you had lost someone too.”

“No… not like you,” says Makoto, quietly.

“Don’t be an ass, Makoto. I know the old fisherman meant a damn lot to you. It’s okay, you know? To admit that you’re sad, and you’re weak. Everybody loses, sometimes.”

“When did you become so philosophical?” asks Makoto, casting Rin a wry glance out of the corner of his eye.

“Shut up,” Rin mumbles. He drinks again, and turns his gaze away.

Makoto smiles.

“Why are you thinking about this, anyway?” he asks.

“Nah,” says Rin. “It’s nothing. Just that, after that day, I thought, _damn_ … this is pretty amazing, you know?”

Makoto knows exactly what he means. Rin doesn’t have to tell him what _that day_ was, or what was amazing about it.

“So many years later. Who would’ve thought that we would really swim together again?”

“You, Rin,” Makoto points out. “Or - at least, you did, back then. _Romantic swimming maniac_ ,” he teases, with a warm smile.

Rin throws a punch at Makoto’s arm. Makoto could dodge it, but doesn’t bother to; he lets Rin’s knuckles connect solidly with his shoulder, and he laughs.

“Anyway, so I was thinking about that. And then I remembered that actually, you and me and Haru, we met even before that. And we found each other again somehow.”

“A red string of fate, huh?” Makoto murmurs softly, almost to himself.

"Geez, it sounds so cheesy when you put it like that.”

Makoto finishes off the last of his iced tea, gathering his thoughts. He sees Rin next to him, tapping his foot on the floor to the rhythm of an invisible song in his head, whistling tunelessly.

The air finally stirs itself into motion, and a light breeze grazes his cheek, hot and damp. In the distance, Makoto hears the sound of an oncoming train.

Rin straightens, and stands up. “Well, that’s my cue. Thanks for lunch, Makoto.”

“It was good to see you, Rin.” says Makoto as he gets to his feet. “I think you’re right, by the way.”

Rin shoots him a blank stare. “About what?”

“Everybody loses, sometimes.”

“Of course, dummy.” Rin grins, but it’s a grin tempered with soft edges, the grin of a young boy from years ago, standing under a sakura tree in the school courtyard.

“All of us… we only found each other again after losing something,” says Makoto.

The train pulls into the station. Rin hitches his bag up on his shoulder.

“Huh,” he says. “I guess you’re right.”

 

* * *

 

This is Iwatobi, and this is the song of the sea and their little port town.

This is the earthy brown of their fences and the howling of the wind through the trees, the pounding crash of the waves, the ripples the tides leave on the shore. These are the footprints that Tachibana Makoto makes with every hesitant step of his life. They leave marks in the sand, and strokes in the water, and they get washed away, but he always knows they were there.

_We were here._

And through it all, he feels the threadbare touch of that red string of fate.

It does not _constrict_ , not painfully, not like a cage. He breathes lightly and easily, even as he sees its strands woven around him. He feels it tugging, quiet and constant. He feels it connecting him to Rin, to Nagisa, to Rei; when he moves to Tokyo, he feels it - not breaking into two, but simply extending, growing longer. This is not a string that will break. This is a string that grows sturdier the more the years go on, the further it has to stretch. It is tied to his pinky finger on his left hand and the threads are gossamer thin like spider’s silk, but strong, so strong.

There is only one person in his life that Makoto does not feel this with.

It is Nanase Haruka, Haruka of the water and the evening breeze from the sea.

_How do you tie down water?_

_How do you loop a thread around it, make a tidy knot and know that it will not slip and slide away?_

_Your hearts are connected_ , Kisumi had said, once; yet Makoto has never once felt the tug of that red string between them. Haru is simply by his side, like breathing.

He is.

They are.

They are here, existing, in the same space.

 

* * *

 

There is a very simple reason why Makoto can see all the red strings but one.

It is the same reason why a fish cannot see the whole of the sea, or a lone human being, standing under a clear blue sky, cannot see the whole of the heavens.

This string is not wound about his finger like the others. It pours out from the deepest part of him. It threads lightly through the thinnest of fissures, where his fragile human heart has cracked and come together again, stronger than before.

And their love is vast, and unspeakable.

 

* * *

 

It is a spring day in Tokyo, just like any other.

The date is early April, and they’ve just started their first year of university. There’s the scent of sakura in the air, drifting amidst the usual city smells of traffic, coffee and teeming humanity. A cool breeze swirls gently round Makoto as he steps out of his door.

He does not have lectures today till later in the afternoon, so he has made a checklist of errands. They are quite mundane and involve things like going to the bank, acquiring some stationery and figuring out where his nearest supermarket is, because, as he is constantly reminded, it is high time that he learns to cook something other than miso soup.

On his way out of his building, Makoto waves at his mailman, a young, energetic-looking fellow with dyed blond hair who is just coming into the lobby. The mailman waves back with a grin.

 _The weather is lovely,_ thinks Makoto, and he finds his gaze drawn, as it always is, up towards the sky.

_After all these years…_

He turns his steps towards the station. Climbing the stairs and beeping his Suica card at the gate, he gets on the train, changing to the Yamanote line towards Shinjuku. The rumbling of the metro is low and rhythmic. Makoto has his headphones plugged in, and as he taps his foot along to L’arc~en~ciel’s “Blurry Eyes”, he lets his gaze drift out aimlessly at the rolling cityscape outside the window.

Tokyo is not like Iwatobi. It has a population one thousand times larger. The mountains in the scenery are not green and do not change with the seasons. They are concrete and steel, neon billboards blinking in the night, dazzling and breathtaking and they never go to sleep in winter.

This is Tokyo.

 

* * *

 

He’d had a dream the other night, more vivid than ever before, a dream of his neighbourhood and the water washing through it, between the alleyways, down to the centre of town, flooding the wide streets of Shibuya crossing.

In Iwatobi, the dreams had been fuzzy round the edges, whispery, out of focus. Here in Tokyo, they are thrown into sharp relief. They are crisp, clear and so _alive_ they can’t possibly be real.

When he wakes, something lingers, and seems to reach out to him wordlessly, from the depths of the city’s rivers and waterways. Calling his name, calling him home.

 

* * *

 

And Makoto follows the path of his red string, unknowingly, out of the train and up the street, into the sliding glass doors of a building with a stylised circular logo (is it brown? is it purple? he and Haru can never agree) hanging outside.

It leads him to a few words with a lady at the front desk, and then to a counter, where he waits for a few moments before a young man in a suit walks out of a door at the back.

“How can I help you, Tachibana-san?” he asks, coming up to Makoto with a warm smile.

The banker has swept-back sandy brown hair and dark brown eyes, and as he leans over the counter, clasping his hands, the glint of a gold band on his left ring finger catches Makoto’s eye.

And the tag on his jacket reads _Uchida Kiyoshi_.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we go, back to the start.
> 
> I listened to [Coldplay's "Swallowed in the Sea"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxpOki7dfeE) a lot while writing this (because, seriously, it's so uncannily the theme song for this fic...). Much of this chapter was also influenced by [Tori Amos' "Gold Dust"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUYmiKAKZRA), including the title.
> 
> _sights and sounds_   
>  _pull me back down_   
>  _another year_   
>  _i was here_   
>  _i was here_
> 
> Thank you so much for reading ♥ There are still a few things to wrap up that will come next chapter, but it will be more of an epilogue. The end is in sight!


	15. haruka of the water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kiyoshi talks to his sister.

Kiyoshi watches from behind his counter as Tachibana Makoto walks out the sliding glass doors of the bank, giving a friendly nod and wave to Miyamura at the front desk along the way. _What a nice young man,_ he thinks.

He busies himself the rest of the morning with paperwork and a trickle of other clients, and goes down the road to Coco Ichibanya for lunch, jostling with the usual crowd of suited salarymen. Mid-mouthful of chicken katsu curry, his phone buzzes.

He reaches into his pocket and takes it out, glancing down at the name on it before answering. "Hello, Mayuko?"

"Hey, Kiyoshi. Just wanted to confirm Saturday morning?"

Kiyoshi swallows his food. "Yeah. I’ll come pick you and Mom up at 6 o’clock."

"So early…" Mayuko groans. Kiyoshi can see her easily in his mind, red hair in a ponytail, wearing her favourite white jacket with green stripes. She’s no doubt slumped on a bench in the locker room of the gym where she’s just started working, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling.

He laughs. "You say that every year."

"It’s early every year," grumbles Mayuko. "It’s not like 6 o’clock in the pissing morning gets any _later_ year after year."

"And it’s not like traffic out to the beach gets any lighter year after year," Kiyoshi reminds his sister.

"All right, all right. We’ll bring the joss sticks and stuff. Is Aya-chan coming?"

"Yup. Oh - are you working late tonight?"

"Yeah. Teaching an aerobics class at 7.45. Why?"

"I'll be coming down for a swim at the pool near you," says Kiyoshi. "We can get supper or something."

"Awesome. I'll be starving."

"I'll call you later. See you."

Mayuko bids him a cheery goodbye, and hangs up first. Kiyoshi puts his phone back into his pocket. As he does, he glimpses a flashing light on his screen where a calendar reminder's just popped up. He lets his gaze linger on it a moment longer, thinking of the blue ocean, and of faded photographs at home.

Kiyoshi cannot remember his father. Not his face, or his touch, or his voice.

But it has always struck him deeply, somehow, that his father had asked for his ashes to be scattered into the sea; every year, when the Uchida family goes to that promontory at the quiet little beach an hour’s drive from Tokyo, and Kiyoshi watches the waves crash against the rocks, when they light the joss sticks, pray and leave little offerings, when he crouches down by the shore and lets the paper boats sail away on the tides...

Kiyoshi swears he can feel his father’s presence, feel the water stir into life.

He pulls out his phone again to text his fiancee about Saturday's plans, finishes the rest of his curry quickly and heads back to work.

 

* * *

 

It is a Tuesday morning, and Haruka uncoils himself from his crouching start, tenses at the sound of his coach's whistle, and _springs_ , glides into the pool in one fluid motion.

_Once you dive in, it will immediately bare its fangs and attack._

The water ripples all around him. He feels it vibrating, quickening. He hears an earnest, childlike voice from years ago, asking him a question. The voice of a young boy with green eyes from the sky, floating down to Haruka on the wind, as they swing in the playground.

He rises to the surface with a powerful dolphin kick, and starts stroking overhead. His arms make waves and splashes of spray that fly out in flecks of foam white.

_But there's nothing to fear. Don't resist the water._

As he swims on, he feels like he is floating. The water embraces him. There's something about it today that feels playful, ticklish, like it's in an unusually lighthearted mood.

A tiny smile finds its way onto Haruka's lips, in the silent privacy of that underwater world.

The skylight shining through the roof makes the floor of the pool glimmer. The water curls itself round his calves. It smiles back gently.

_Thrust your fingers into the surface and carve an opening. Then slide your body through that opening. Moving your arms, your head, your chest…_

Makoto had never mentioned it again, and Haruka had never asked him, not out loud. There's never been a need to. That question has stayed, pounding in his chest, for years; the strange sensation he feels that the water is watching, that it draws breath and wakes from slumber. That's it, thinks Haruka. That's what always washes over him when he enters that blue world. That's what he feels pulsing in his veins. That's the whisper he hears in his ears.

And it had been Makoto who put it into words for him, so simply and easily, many spring days ago.

_"When you swim, Haru-chan, do you ever feel like the water is alive?"_

Haruka knows that Makoto's always been the poetic, sensitive one. Even if people call him the _deep_ and _unknowable_ half of the two, the truth is that it's Makoto who's the thinker. The straight-A literature student, the one with the way with words, who sees more than he lets on.

Haruka just swims. Makoto lives.

He _lives_ , and he moves through the world with a heart that soars on the wind, through roots that go deep, deep into the ground. It is the most wonderful thing about him. It is even more wonderful that Makoto himself has never been aware of the quiet power he holds in his hands.

Haruka has known Makoto all his life. He is still surprised by him, constantly.

He turns, kicks off the wall and pushes himself forward into the clear blue, into the home stretch. He surges into the light that's waiting on the other end. This was a good swim. He feels it in his bones, in the tingling of his fingertips.

_The water is alive._

And Haruka feels something bubbling up from within him that can only be called _joy_.

 

* * *

 

As Makoto takes a step into the lecture theatre, he braces himself, and sure enough -

"OI! MAKOTO!"

Cringing inwardly, he lets his gaze drift up towards the third row of seats.

The girl who spilled her coffee on his lap on the first day of university is waving at him, with a complete and frankly admirable lack of self-consciousness. She is wearing her hair down today, and her glasses are perched slightly askew on her nose, like she's just tumbled straight out of bed, grabbed them off her nightstand and run helter-skelter into the lecture.

This is probably not too far from the truth, thinks Makoto, as he slides into the seat next to her. "Good morning, Sachiko-chan."

As he settles in, taking his notebook and pencil case out from his backpack, he notices an alarmingly familiar glint in Tanaka Sachiko's eyes and a grin on her face that is just on the wrong side of dangerous.

"Why are you staring at me?" he asks.

In response, Sachiko reaches into her jacket pocket and whips out an envelope. Her grin widens.

"Someone gave this to me yesterday. And asked me to give it to you."

Makoto takes the envelope from her. It's pink, and decorated with tiny hearts.

"Oh god no, another one…"

"Oh _yes_ ," says Sachiko. "Come on, open it!"

Makoto feels himself blushing. "Not now!"

"Why not? It's not like I don't know who it's from. Or what it's about." Sachiko smirks.

Makoto looks down at the neat handwriting that says _Tachibana Makoto-kun_ on the front of the envelope. He opens it reluctantly, and takes out a scented piece of paper.

Sachiko does her very best to read it over his shoulder, but Makoto blocks her bodily, stopping just short of elbowing the petite girl in the ribs, though he has a feeling that she'd just fight him back even if he did.

"Ah, come on," Sachiko grumbles. "You're so boring, Makoto. So? What's it say?"

"Um," Makoto mumbles, folding up the paper quickly and putting it away.

"You don't have to tell me. Something like, _Tachibana-kun, you're so handsome, I love your_ \- "

"Sachiko-chan!" Makoto yelps, before this undoubtedly salacious sentence has a chance to reach completion.

Sachiko laughs. Makoto slumps back in his seat with a resigned sigh.

"You could just go out with her," says Sachiko.

"I can't," Makoto says.

Sachiko eyes him with a questioning gaze. "You're always like this, Makoto… Is there someone you like?"

Makoto doesn't respond, not in words, but he sees a knowing smile spread across Sachiko's face in the wake of his silence.

"That's so cute. Why don't you tell them?" she asks.

"Well…" says Makoto.

He hesitates, smiles and shakes his head. "It's nothing."

Sachiko opens her mouth with a frown, no doubt to admonish him about the _value of communication_ , but then their professor walks in and shuts the door, and Makoto starts his day at university with thoughts of his blue-eyed dolphin boy surfacing in his mind, throughout the lecture on frameworks of early childhood education.

 

* * *

 

_Why don't you tell them?_

_Because, well - somehow, I feel like he already knows._

_We both do._  
_We've felt something, for a long time, for as long as we can remember.  
_ _We've just never put it into words, have we, Haru?_

 

_But I get the feeling the time is coming soon…_

 

* * *

 

Haruka has a dream, one hot summer night in late July, exactly twenty days after Makoto kisses him for the first time.

It is an unusually vivid dream. The colours in it are bright and larger than life. But it is blurry, hazy and out of focus, like he is gazing into the depths of a pool and seeing it reflected below the rippling surface.

He is older in it, much older. He recognises the blue of his own eyes with a jolt. There are fine lines around his eyelids, little worry lines and furrows. His cheeks have grown thinner. The strength in his fingers seems to fail. They shake, ever so slightly, as he gets his keys out and opens the front door to a flat in an unfamiliar neighbourhood.

He is older. But for some reason, Makoto is not.

Makoto is in his bed, sleeping peacefully. His face is just as it is right now. It has not changed. His chest rises and falls with steady breaths.

Haruka sits by Makoto's side on the edge of the bed, reaches for his hand…

And he feels himself _fall_ , sinking with a silent splash and a wordless cry.

He falls through the water on his back, as all goes dark above him and he closes his eyes. The trickling stream of bubbles from his nose and mouth grow thinner. The crushing weight of the ocean on his chest is closing in. He feels his breath ebb away slowly. He feels the years pass, one by one.

And then -

He hears something break through the surface of the water, from the highest reaches of the sky.

His eyes blink open slowly. They widen.

There's a hand, stretching towards him in the darkness.

 

* * *

 

 _From: Haru  
_ _makoto. i can't remember if i closed the kitchen windows in my flat. can you check for me._

 _From: Tachibana Makoto  
_ _Okay, Haru! I'll pop by after lectures today. You're still at the airport?_

 _From: Haru_  
_i'm at the gate  
_ _boarding soon_

 _From: Tachibana Makoto  
_ _Ahhh it's so exciting, your first university tournament! GOOD LUCK!! Have lots of fun ^^_

 _From: Haru_  
_thanks  
_ _i haven't tried the pool at osaka. i hope it's nice_

 _From: Tachibana Makoto_  
_You'll be fine no matter what pool it is.  
_ _Because... you really are the best in the water, Haru-chan._

 _From: Haru  
_ _what are you talking about?_

 

* * *

 

_It's a hand._

But not just any hand.

It's a hand that Haruka has known for as long as he can remember, a hand that he has grown up with. It is strong and callused round the knuckles from helping his mother with housework, weeding in the garden during spring, building sandcastles and gripping the chains of the playground swings.

And there is the faintest glimpse of a sunbeam from beyond that hand, shining through the water, and Haruka rouses himself from his sleep with everything he holds in his heart, and he reaches up, up and above.

Their hands meet. Makoto pulls him to the light of the sky.

Haruka wakes up.

 

* * *

 

The amount of water on earth has stayed the same for two billion years.

From the sea that carries Iwatobi's squid fishing boats out on the waves, to the waves of the Pacific that lap at Bondi Beach, the water moves, slowly and serenely. It is calm. It is not in any hurry.

It has all the time in the world, unlike these humans.

_Humans... so strange, so contrary, yet so… powerful…_

Humans, who, with their short time on this earth, live like shooting stars, who carry emotions within them that blaze like fireworks and then chill like ice, who are tied to the dry land of the earth in their existence but who, somehow, still manage to reach for the heavens, and to get there.

Humans, whose little lives are measured by all sorts of hopes and dreams, who, at the very beginning and in the end, are simply -

love.

The water understands.

It has no need for any questions, not here and now; it is content to watch in peace. It flows from shore to shore, dormant and silent. It falls in crystal clear raindrops.

And what the water said in another life echoes through the ripples of time, trickling, grain by grain, like sand in an hourglass.

 

ー終わりー

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -lets out long exhale-
> 
> Well, here we are. It's been one crazy ride.
> 
> This was, from the start, always going to be a love story. But not a typical one in any way. I wanted to use the concept of water and the idea of water being _literally_ alive - what would it be like? how would it interact with the boys? what difference would it make in their lives? - to bring out aspects of love and life, all sorts of different aspects from romantic to platonic to familial to just plain screwed up (talk to me about my headcanons for Miyata Shinya and Kurosaki Kenji that didn't make it into the fic, haha).
> 
> And then there's Makoto and Haru's love, which is really unique in that it encompasses every single sort of love possible, and thus became the centre of it all.
> 
> At every turn, this fic proved itself to be immensely challenging, aggravating and rewarding all at once; I've never written anything on this scale, in this genre, with this sort of ambition before, tackling a theme like _love_ to boot. I learned so much, I made some awesome friends, I hit my head against the wall and yelled into the void a lot. I can only express my deepest, most heartfelt gratitude to readers who have stuck with me the whole way.
> 
> THANK YOU, I have no words for my appreciation ♥ 
> 
> So here's where I'll leave you! You can always catch up with me on social media to find out what I'm doing next :) oh, and! If you're interested, I made a mix of [the music of WtWS](http://themorninglark.tumblr.com/post/116866921280/we-were-here-the-music-of-wtws).
> 
> find me on [tumblr](http://themorninglark.tumblr.com/) | [@nahyutas on twitter](https://twitter.com/nahyutas)


End file.
